Ghezel Hesar prison: warning over transfer of more than 200 prisoners for execution

Iran Human Rights warned on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, that more than 200 prisoners of Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj have been transferred to other prisons, and that the purpose of the transfer is to carry out their death sentences. In recent years Ghezel Hesar has been one of the main places of execution in Iran.

According to the human rights organisation, prisoners fear that the transfer to other prisons will deprive them of the ability to tell the outside world about their situation and make it easier to carry out executions away from public attention. Dispersing prisoners sentenced to death cuts their ties with fellow inmates, who until now passed on word outside of transfers to solitary confinement and of executions being carried out.

Ghezel Hesar prisoners' protest against the wave of executions

Over the past two years, prisoners in Unit 2 of Ghezel Hesar have repeatedly protested the wave of executions with hunger strikes. In October 2025, about 1,500 prisoners sentenced to death in drug cases staged a collective strike for six days. In July 2026, after six death-row prisoners were moved to solitary confinement, the prisoners of this unit went on hunger strike again, and according to HRANA they ended the strike only after officials of the judiciary and the Prisons Organisation promised a six-month halt to executions, a review of the cases and attention to their other demands.

Prisoners of Unit 2 had earlier said that resuming executions would mean trampling on those very commitments. The new mass transfer, a few months after that promise, has doubled families' fear of executions being carried out en masse.

The Islamic Republic's execution machine

After the uprising of the month of Dey (December 2025–January 2026) and the war, the Islamic Republic has intensified the wave of executions, and many sentences are carried out without official announcement and without informing families, among them the execution of Hamid Mohammadi in Bandar Abbas prison, which the authorities did not announce. In these same weeks, political prisoners in Ghezel Hesar have also protested this trend, such as Hamzeh Savari, who went on hunger strike in solidarity with Mokhtar Al-Boshokeh.

The transfer of more than 200 prisoners from Ghezel Hesar, Iran Human Rights warns, opens the way to executions carried out away from public view.