Focus on Iran: Three Men are Executed Amid War, Marking First Executions of December 2025/​January 2026 Protestors

Iran hanged three men — Saleh Mohammadi, Saeed Davodi, and Mehdi Ghasemi — in the city of Qom on March 19, 2026, the day before the nation’s new year. According to the judi­cia­ry-affil­i­at­ed Mizan News Agency, the three men, who were accused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the killings of two police­men dur­ing protests, were hanged ​“in the pres­ence of a group of peo­ple.” This marked the first exe­cu­tion of pro­tes­tors fol­low­ing the recent wave of nation­wide protests, which began on December 28, 2025, ini­tial­ly in response to eco­nom­ic hard­ships, and then con­tin­ued through mid-January 2026. Rights groups and United Nation’s experts have warned of a new wave of mass exe­cu­tions, while also voic­ing con­cern over the safe­ty of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers during wartime.

According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), Mr. Mohammadi, who turned 19 on March 11, and Mr. Davodi, who would have turned 22 on March 21, were co-defen­dants accused of killing a police­man dur­ing protests on January 8, 2026. The First Branch of the Qom Criminal Court sen­tenced Mr. Mohammadi to qisas, or ret­ri­bu­tion-in-kind, and Mr. Saeed to a non-cap­i­tal sen­tence on February 3, 2026. They were both also sen­tenced to death on charges of mohab­ereh, or wag­ing war against God. Sources told IHRNGO that Mr. Mohammadi ini­tial­ly made self-incrim­i­nat­ing con­fes­sions that he lat­er tes­ti­fied were due to tor­ture and coer­cion. Despite his tes­ti­mo­ny, the court reject­ed his claim and used the coerced con­fes­sion and ​“eye­wit­ness accounts” as the basis for his con­vic­tion. The third man, Mr. Ghasemi was sen­tenced to death for both moharabeh and qisas for the killing of anoth­er police­man at a dif­fer­ent loca­tion on January 8, 2026 — one of the blood­i­est days of protest across the nation. ​“The pro­test­ers exe­cut­ed today were sen­tenced to death fol­low­ing gross­ly unfair tri­als, based on con­fes­sions extract­ed under tor­ture and coer­cion. We con­sid­er these exe­cu­tions to con­sti­tute extra­ju­di­cial killings, car­ried out with the intent of cre­at­ing ter­ror to sup­press polit­i­cal dis­sent,” stat­ed IHRNGO Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. 

Earlier in February, rights groups, such as IHRNGO, warned of death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and extra­ju­di­cial killings in the after­math of mass arrests of pro­tes­tors, with some esti­mates as high as 40,000 arrest­ed. On February 20, 2026, Amnesty International warned of 30 peo­ple at risk of exe­cu­tion, 22 of whom are in the midst of unfair tri­al pro­ceed­ings and eight of whom have received death sen­tences; among them was Mr. Mohammadi, as well two 17-year-olds, Matin Mohammadi and Erfan Amiri, who are ​“under­go­ing a fast-tracked, tor­ture-taint­ed gross­ly unfair tri­al” and whose exe­cu­tion would be in con­tra­ven­tion to inter­na­tion­al law (e.g. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Convention on the Rights of the Child). 

Iran Execution Trends in Recent Years

Although exe­cu­tions of pro­tes­tors have gar­nered wide­spread media atten­tion and con­dem­na­tion, they do not account for the major­i­ty of exe­cu­tions in recent years. A IHRNGO September 16, 2025, report found that at least 2,910 peo­ple had been exe­cut­ed dur­ing the three years since the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in 2022; Ms. Amini died while in cus­tody of the government’s moral­i­ty police, sub­se­quent­ly spark­ing Women, Life, Freedom protests nation­wide. Among those exe­cut­ed were 37 pris­on­ers of con­science and 14 pro­tes­tors — 12 of whom were involved in Women, Life, Freedom protests. However, more than half of these 2,910 pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed for drug-relat­ed offens­es. ​“While the major­i­ty of those exe­cut­ed by the Islamic Republic’s exe­cu­tion machine are con­vict­ed of non-polit­i­cal crimes, the pur­pose of these exe­cu­tions is polit­i­cal repres­sion and the intim­i­da­tion of soci­ety to deter future protests,” explains IHRNGO Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. 

In its lat­est report, Harm Reduction International (HRI) notes an aver­age of near­ly 3 drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions per day in Iran in 2025, leav­ing at least 222 chil­dren with­out a par­ent. With at least 955 drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions in total, this accounts for near­ly half (46%) of all exe­cu­tions in Iran in 2025, which is in line with trends seen in 2024 (52%), 2023 (55%), 2022 (44%), and 2021 (42%). Ethnic minori­ties con­tin­ue to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed, com­pris­ing 35% of all drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions in 2025. Of these, a third was from the Baluch minor­i­ty, who only make up about 2% of the pop­u­la­tion and who have his­tor­i­cal­ly been mar­gin­al­ized. The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Seto, released an advance unedit­ed ver­sion of her report on March 9, 2026, which explains that the Baluch peo­ple are ​“acute­ly affect­ed by drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions — cas­es often marked by pover­ty, undoc­u­ment­ed sta­tus and lack of due process pro­tec­tions, includ­ing reliance on forced con­fes­sions.” The report also high­lights oth­er minor­i­ty groups, such as Kurds, Arabs, and Afghans, affect­ed by the death penal­ty in Iran.