The Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran (HRANA), marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty, announced that the Islamic Republic executed at least 2,003 people between 10 October 2025 and 8 October 2026. The number of executions in Iran is up about 29 percent on the previous comparable period and is the highest figure the organisation has recorded in the 10 editions of its annual report.
According to the report, published on Friday 9 October, at least 69 of those executed faced political and security charges, and 35 of them were linked to the protests of the January 2026 uprising. HRANA also reported 932 executions since the start of 2026 and at least 125 new death sentences.
Secret executions, women and teenagers
According to HRANA, about 95 percent of the executions were carried out secretly, without any official announcement; among them was the execution of Esmaeil Khalili Baseri in Adelabad prison in Shiraz, which the judicial authorities did not announce. During this period at least 47 women were executed, four people were under 18 at the time of the alleged offence, and 9 executions were carried out in public.
About 57 percent of the executions were for murder and more than 36 percent for drug-related charges. The provinces of Razavi Khorasan with 200, Isfahan with 164 and Alborz with 123 executions had the highest numbers, and Dastgerd prison in Isfahan, Adelabad prison in Shiraz and Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj top the list of prisons.
More than two thousand people were executed in one year, and nearly all of these executions were carried out without official announcement.
The multi-year trend and reactions
HRANA recalled that the number of recorded executions rose from 505 in the 2016–2017 period to more than 2,000 in the latest period. The organisation described the Islamic Republic's use of executions as a systematic tool of political repression and called for an immediate halt to executions and the annulment of sentences, especially political sentences and those handed down to people under 18.
The same report points to 369 forced televised confessions linked to the January protests, and names Amirhossein Hatami and Saleh Mohammadi, who were executed at the ages of 18 and 19. Ali Zakani, a 19-year-old protester from Qazvin, is also now at risk of execution. Earlier, Amnesty International had put the number of executions in Iran in 2025 at at least 2,159, the highest figure since 1981.
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