Report: Iran Executed At Least 29 People Linked to Dec 2025–Jan 2026 Protests

Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center said Thursday that Iran executed at least 29 people linked to the December 2025-January 2026 protests over a five-month period, several of them 18 or 19 years old, in what the groups called an “ongoing unlawful execution campaign” marked by rushed trials, vague national-security charges and some public hangings.

In a joint report published Sept. 10, the groups said Iranian authorities announced those 29 executions between March 18 and the end of August. They said the protest-linked cases were part of a broader total of at least 59 men executed in the same period on politically motivated and vague national-security charges. Scores more, they said, remain at imminent risk of execution.

The organizations said their findings were based on court verdicts in three capital cases, official statements and execution announcements, state-media “confession” videos, and interviews with 12 informed sources, including lawyers, journalists, former cellmates and human rights defenders.

The report describes a consistent pattern. In 16 of the 29 protest-linked cases, Human Rights Watch said, there were no allegations that the defendants had killed anyone. Instead, people were sentenced to death for alleged acts such as damaging public property, throwing stones, setting fires or entering government buildings, often under broad charges including “waging war against God” and “corruption on earth.”

Human Rights Watch said the proceedings moved with unusual speed, ranging from just over five weeks to less than eight months from arrest to execution. Defendants were often denied access to independent lawyers of their choice, while courts relied on security-agency reports and confessions later retracted in court, according to the report.

Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Day after day, Iran’s authorities are sending protesters, including teenagers, to the gallows based on torture-tainted ‘confessions’ and following grossly unfair proceedings that are too short to establish a defendant’s guilt even for a minor offense, let alone for capital charges.”

The report said authorities relied on coerced or torture-tainted confessions, including some later broadcast on state media. Human Rights Watch, citing the sources it reviewed, documented allegations including beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, threats of rape, prolonged solitary confinement, and denial of sleep and food.

Several cases highlighted the pace of the executions. Saleh Mohammadi, 19, was executed on March 19, about five weeks after his arrest, Human Rights Watch said. Amir Hossein Hatami, 18, was executed in early April, 84 days after his arrest, according to the group. Sasan Azadvar Jonaqani, 21, was executed on April 30 in Isfahan after being convicted over alleged acts including breaking the windows of a police bus and throwing stones, not killing anyone, the report said.

The groups also said five executions were carried out in public. Among them were the July 28 executions of Abolfazl Sepahi and Amir Hossein Safari in Isfahan, according to Human Rights Watch.

Under international human rights law, the use of the death penalty is sharply limited. Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which says that where capital punishment is retained it should be reserved for the “most serious crimes,” generally understood to mean intentional killing, and imposed only after strict fair-trial safeguards.

The report says Iran has moved in the opposite direction. Human Rights Watch said at least eight protesters were convicted under a 2025 law titled “Intensifying Punishments for Spies and Collaborators with the Zionist Regime and Hostile States.” According to the group and the Boroumand Center’s research, the law broadened death-eligible conduct and shortened appeal deadlines, turning it into a fast-track mechanism in protest cases.

The findings broadly align with a warning issued last month by the United Nations. On Aug. 5, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that since March 19, at least 56 people had been executed on national-security-related charges, including 27 in protest-linked cases, and that more than 100 others were at risk. He said, “I am alarmed by the rise in executions and death sentences issued in Iran since March, and that capital punishment continues to be used to instill fear among the population and suppress dissent.”

Exact tallies vary because of secrecy and reporting restrictions, but the broader trend is clear. The Boroumand Center recorded 2,113 executions in Iran in 2025, which Human Rights Watch said was the highest known annual total since the late 1980s.

Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center called for an immediate halt to executions tied to protest and national-security cases, a moratorium on the death penalty, and preservation of evidence for possible future accountability efforts.