Iran’s judiciary executed several protest-related prisoners in one week, while prisoners across 56 prisons continued their collective hunger strike against the death penalty.
In the past week, Iran’s judiciary has carried out a new wave of executions tied to the January 2026 uprising, amid a broader escalation of political and security-related death sentences. The executions of Fathollah Avari, Mehrdad Mohammadinia, Ashkan Maleki, and Abbas Akbari Feyzabadi, alongside earlier executions of Kurdish political prisoners Ramin Zaleh and Karim Maroufpour, have deepened fears that the Islamic Republic is using the atmosphere of war and regional tension to intensify domestic repression.
On Wednesday, June 3, 2026, Mizan, the news agency affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, announced that Fathollah Avari had been executed. Avari was among those arrested during the January 2026 uprising and had been sentenced to death on the charge of killing a police officer.
According to the judiciary’s official account, Mohammad-Javad Bakhshian, a police officer, was killed during protests in Hamedan, and Fathollah Avari was arrested as the main suspect in the case. The judiciary claimed that evidence including CCTV footage, a forensic medical report, and the defendant’s confessions formed the basis of the sentence, alleging that Avari killed Bakhshian with a knife.
Yet no independent information is available about the circumstances of Avari’s arrest, the conditions of his interrogation, his access to a lawyer during the early stages of the case, or the way his trial was conducted. Nor is there any possibility of independently verifying the claims made by judicial authorities. The judiciary said the sentence was carried out after the legal process was completed and the ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Avari’s execution came only two days after the execution of two other detainees from the January 2026 uprising. On Monday, June 1, 2026, Mizan announced that Mehrdad Mohammadinia and Ashkan Maleki had been executed in Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj. The judiciary accused the two political prisoners of taking part in the burning of Jafari Mosque in Tehran’s Kuy-e Nasr neighborhood, damaging public property, blocking streets, and clashing with security forces.
The judiciary said their death sentences had been upheld by the Supreme Court and then carried out. In its report, however, the judiciary did not describe the January uprising as a protest movement, but as the “January 2026 coup.” Protesters were misrepresented as “elements affiliated” with foreign governments. State media claimed that the United States, Israel, and opposition groups had supported the protests with the aim of destabilizing the country.
This language echoes Ali Khamenei’s earlier description of the January 2026 uprising. In a speech on February 1, 2026, marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, he called the protests a “coup” and described their violence as “similar to ISIS,” adding that the uprising had been “suppressed.”
In the case of Mohammadinia and Maleki, the judiciary cited confessions, a reconstruction of the alleged crime scene, and CCTV footage. In part of the official account, the defendants are quoted as saying they entered the mosque, set fire to motorcycles in the courtyard, and broke the building’s windows, with the fire later spreading to other parts of the mosque.
Judicial officials also claimed that the two men accepted the charges in court. Human rights organizations, however, have repeatedly warned that confessions recorded or broadcast in security cases in Iran are often obtained under detention, psychological pressure, torture, or denial of free access to a lawyer.
The human rights organization Hengaw reported that Mehrdad Mohammadinia and Ashkan Maleki were executed without being allowed a final visit with their families. Hengaw also said they had been denied access to lawyers of their own choosing and deprived of fair-trial standards throughout the judicial process.
The judiciary’s indictment against the two included charges such as “acting against national security,” “collaboration with hostile governments,” and “creating fear and terror in society.” The official report also claimed that the January protests took place while Iran was facing the threat of military attack by the United States and Israel, and that the unrest had provided a “pretext” for foreign attack.
The executions followed another hidden execution the previous week. In the early hours of May 25, 2026, Abbas Akbari Feyzabadi, another detainee from the January uprising, was executed in Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan. Earlier still, on May 21, 2026, two Kurdish political prisoners, Ramin Zaleh and Karim Maroufpour, were executed in Naqadeh Prison.
Human rights sources say these executions were carried out without prior notice to families and lawyers, after months of security detention, torture, and denial of fair trial. Rights activists argue that the Islamic Republic is using the war atmosphere and regional tensions to expand internal repression. According to published reports, since the beginning of military confrontations between Iran, Israel, and the United States, more than 30 people have been executed in Iran, at least 17 of them detainees from the January 2026 uprising.
Mai Sato, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, had previously called for an immediate halt to executions, the release of those arbitrarily detained, and an end to internet restrictions. She warned that the use of security charges against political opponents, the issuance of death sentences based on forced confessions, and the targeting of ethnic and religious minorities are part of a continuing pattern of human rights violations in Iran.
Amnesty International has also said in a recent report that Iranian authorities have intensified domestic repression under the shadow of regional tensions. The organization pointed to rising arbitrary arrests, internet restrictions, intensified security controls, and executions, describing the human rights situation in Iran as “critical.” According to Amnesty International’s annual report, the Islamic Republic executed at least 2,159 people in 2025, the highest recorded number of executions in Iran since 1981.
“No to Executions on Tuesdays”
Against this backdrop, the “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign continued its collective protest from inside Iran’s prisons. In the 122nd week of the campaign, prisoners in 56 prisons across the country went on hunger strike, warning against the rise in political and security-related executions and calling for an urgent response from international institutions.
The campaign’s statement said that several prisoners had been executed in recent days, including Ramin Zaleh, Karim Maroufpour, Mojtaba Kian, and Abbas Akbari Feyzabadi. According to the statement, these executions were carried out “without fair trial and on security and political charges.” The campaign stressed that “dozens and hundreds of other prisoners” remain under sentence of death in prisons across Iran.
According to information published by the campaign, at least 72 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of the current year, more than 25 of them political or security prisoners. Iran Human Rights also announced on Monday that with the execution of Abbas Akbari Feyzabadi, a protester arrested in connection with the January uprising, the number of prisoners executed in connection with those protests had reached 15.
The campaign also expressed concern over the situation of several other political prisoners. It said the death sentences of Manouchehr Falah, Rouhollah Karki, and four defendants in the so-called Ekbatan case—Milad Armoon, Navid Najaran, Seyed Mohammad-Mehdi Hosseini, and Mehdi Imani—had been upheld, placing their lives in “serious danger.”
The recent death sentences in the Ekbatan case have drawn criticism from the defendants’ lawyers. Mohammad-Hossein Aghasi, Milad Armoon’s lawyer, criticized the judicial process, saying: “The court’s ruling has not been delivered to the lawyers in writing, and there has not even been any possibility of seeing or copying the verdict.” Babak Paknia, another lawyer in the case, said that Judge Salavati had barred him from attending the hearings and that the defendants had only been informed of their sentences verbally.
The “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign also highlighted the role of women prisoners and families seeking justice in the struggle against the death penalty. Its statement said: “Resistant women in different prisons have always raised the voice of freedom and the right to life.” Referring to restrictions imposed on women prisoners in Evin’s women’s ward, the campaign added that some have been deprived of visits and phone calls with their families because of their protests against executions.
The campaign welcomed recent reactions from international human rights bodies. In recent days, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and several other human rights organizations condemned the rise in executions in Iran and called for their immediate suspension. The European Parliament also passed a resolution condemning executions and the repression of protesters in Iran, urging European governments to make political relations with the Islamic Republic conditional on the suspension of executions.
The campaign’s statement ended with an appeal: “We call on international human rights bodies and the awakened consciences of the world to take effective action to prevent the continuation of these inhuman executions and to stand with the people of Iran in the tragedy of executions.”
The “No to Executions on Tuesdays” hunger-strike campaign began on January 29, 2024, initiated by political prisoners in Iran. Every Tuesday, more prisoners from different prisons, held on various charges, join the strike. So far, political and non-political prisoners in 56 prisons across Iran have joined the campaign, collectively going on hunger strike every Tuesday against the death penalty. Many of them have witnessed the execution of their cellmates.
The past week shows how execution has become one of the Islamic Republic’s central instruments of rule in the postwar conjuncture: a way to punish protest, recode revolt as foreign conspiracy, intimidate society, and restore authority through death. But the hunger strikes spreading across Iran’s prisons also show that the machinery of execution is being confronted from within the very places where it is meant to produce silence.
