It has been almost three months since Peyvand Naimi, 30, was arrested in connection with the mass street protests that spread across Iran in January before being brutally suppressed. Since then, he has been detained for more than a month in solitary confinement, appeared in a televised forced confession, and has undergone two mock hangings, beatings, interrogation, psychological torture and starvation.
He has been accused of involvement in the deaths of security agents during the protests and of celebrating the death of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but his family insist he has done nothing wrong and that no formal charges have been made. He has been denied access to a lawyer; his relatives fear he now faces execution.
“My whole body was shaking when I heard about the torture he has endured,” says Zahra Hosseini*, a close relative. “It’s unbelievable. I am very worried.”
Naimi’s uncertain fate comes amid concerns that a surge in executions is taking place in Iran and has been “overshadowed” by the US-Israeli war on Iran. At least 145 people are confirmed to have been killed in 2026 so far, with an additional 400-plus executions reported but not verified, according to Iran Human Rights.
Earlier this month, three men were hanged in public after they were arrested over the January protests. Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old wrestling star, along with Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi, was convicted of moharebeh, or waging war against God, according to state media. A day earlier, Kourosh Keyvani, a Swedish-Iranian dual national, was executed for spying for Israel.
The internet shutdown makes it impossible to determine exactly how many executions have been carried out this year. Many death sentences, or even charges that could lead to the death penalty, have not been officially announced. Instead, they are only communicated to the prisoners themselves and their families.
Families of the tens of thousands of people still detained after the January protests are also being warned by the authorities not to contact anyone. Dozens of protesters are facing the death penalty, according to Amnesty.
“We are concerned that these executions and human rights violations are overshadowed by the war,” says Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights. “Right now, everyone is thinking about oil prices, and because of that the political cost of these executions is very low.”
In the central Iranian city of Isfahan, Shervin Bagherian Jabali’s family found out he had been sentenced to death in a broadcast on state television. In the footage, an interrogator tells Jabali, 18, he has been charged with moharebeh.
In a trembling voice, Jabali asks, “What does moharebeh mean? Could you explain it to me? I don’t know what it is, sir.” “Execution,” comes the reply.
One of his friends told the Guardian that Jabali had been subjected to three mock executions, with a noose placed around his neck in an attempt to force him to confess to killing four of the Basij militia’s security agents.
On Monday, state media announced that two political prisoners – Mohammad Taghavi, 59, and Akbar Daneshvarkar, 60 – had been executed for baghi (armed rebellion against the state). Amnesty International previously said their death sentences in October 2024 followed a grossly unfair trial marred by allegations of torture to extract forced confessions.
Also this week, Babak Alipour, 34, and Pouya Ghobadi, 33, were executed in Ghezel Hesar prison, near Tehran, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, after being sentenced to death for membership of the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, an exiled opposition group, following months of interrogation and torture.
Human rights groups say state media use executions as warnings to the public against dissent. “Since the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, Iranian authorities have deliberately weaponised the death penalty to instil fear among the population and suppress dissent,” says Mansoureh Mills, Amnesty International’s Iran researcher.
On 23 March, the first deputy chief of the judiciary reportedly announced that the cases tied to the January protests had been reviewed, with some reaching final verdicts that were now being carried out. He emphasised that no leniency would be granted to those convicted.
There were at least 1,639 executions in 2025, compared with 975 in 2024, according to the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, while civil society organisations have said there were actually more than 2,000 executions last year. Such differences in figures are unsurprising, according to the UN, as only 7% of executions were announced by official sources. Most were carried out for drugs or murder charges.
In northern Iran, close to the border with Turkmenistan, Danial Niazi’s mother found out on 20 February that her 18-year-old son would face trial in 10 days’ time, according to Kurdpa, a Kurdish news agency and human rights organisation. With the internet still down, it remains unclear whether this has happened.
According to a copy of his indictment seen by the Guardian, Niazi, a member of the Kurdish minority, has been charged with moharebeh as well as attempted murder, intentional assault, assembly and collusion against national security, disrupting public order, and propaganda against the state.
Awin Mostafazadeh, a spokesperson for Kurdpa, says: “When his mother saw him in prison, his face was bruised and swollen. He had been beaten so badly he could not walk and relied on other prisoners to reach the visiting booth. They told him they would arrest his mother and rape her in front of him, and detain and torture his brother.”
During the war with the US and Israel, there have been reports of severe overcrowding and prisoners being denied food, water, medicine and sanitation, as well as enforced disappearance and torture.
According to Amnesty International, on 3 March security forces used teargas against prisoners in Mahabad after they protested for their release following nearby explosions. In Evin prison, detainees held in section 209, many of them activists and dissidents, have been transferred to unidentified locations, with families receiving no, or contradictory, information about their whereabouts.
Reza Younesi, a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, posted on X that on Sunday night his brother was among 22 prisoners forcibly removed from Ghezel Hesar prison. “The families of these prisoners have no information about the condition or whereabouts of their loved ones,” he wrote.
After seeing Naimi’s forced confession on television and feeling powerless to do anything, his relative, Hosseini, says: “The only thing that could possibly make a difference was to be his voice and to make sure everybody knows what’s going on. When someone is committing a crime in a dark place, they feel comfortable, but as soon as you put the spotlight on them, they get scared.”
* name changed
