Mohammad Faraji, 23, and Raouf Sheikh-Ma’aroufi, 24, both from the city of Bukan in Iran’s West Azerbaijan Province and among those arrested during the 2022 nationwide uprising, officially received their death sentences on Tuesday, February 24, at Bukan Central Prison.
The two young men, who were convicted on fabricated charges of “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth” — charges frequently used by the Iranian regime to impose harsh punishments on political detainees — had been held for more than three years in a state of legal uncertainty and subjected to severe physical and psychological torture:
Raouf Sheikh-Ma’aroufi was violently arrested on the evening of Monday, December 26, 2022, by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence in Bukan, the Iranian regime’s main intelligence body.
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- Mohammad Faraji was first arrested on Tuesday, February 21, 2024. He was temporarily released on January 13, 2025, but just one week later he was deceived and abducted by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence in Urmia, who posed as “customers at an auto repair shop,” and was re-arrested.
After several months of torture and interrogation at the Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Urmia, both were transferred to Bukan Central Prison on June 10, 2023, where they have remained in complete uncertainty ever since. Court sessions to review their charges were held separately in the fall of 2025, and their death sentences were formally communicated to them on February 24, 2026.
According to reports, during prolonged interrogations at the Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Urmia, the two prisoners endured the most severe forms of physical and psychological torture in order to extract forced confessions — confessions that became the primary basis for issuing their death sentences.
