22 Executions on April 7, 8, and 9, Including 5 Political Prisoners and 3 Women
Total Executions under Pezeshkian Reaches 995
Amid escalating domestic and international crises, Ali Khamenei has launched a new wave of executions. On just April 7, 8, and 9, 22 prisoners were hanged in the prisons of Mashhad, Qezelhessar, Shahroud, Gonabad, Dezful, Aligudarz, Bukan, Gonbad-e Kavus, and Kermanshah. Among those executed were five political prisoners and three women. The number of executions over these three days is even higher and will be updated upon further verification. This brings the total number of executions under Pezeshkian’s term, which began in August 2024, to 995.
On April 8, five political prisoners—Farhad Shakeri, Abdolhakim Gorgij, Abdolrahman Gorgij, Taj Mohammad Khormali, and Malek Ali Fadaei—were executed in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. They had been arrested in 2015 by intelligence agents in Mashhad along with seven others in the same case and were subjected to torture. Nine of them were sentenced to death by the so-called revolutionary court in Mashhad. Three of the sentences were carried out in January 2021. Despite clear legal violations of the regime’s laws in the sentences of the remaining six, the regime’s Supreme Court ultimately upheld their death sentences in August 2024. In 2022, these six prisoners sent letters to the UN Special Rapporteur and Secretary-General, reporting the unjust sentences, the torture they endured, and the pressures placed on their families. In a statement issued on August 9, 2024, the Iranian Resistance called on the United Nations and the European Union to take urgent action to save the lives of these six political prisoners.
In addition to the five political prisoners, five other inmates—Amir Ahmad Sani, Mohammadreza Damideh, and three women—were executed in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad on April 8.
On Monday, April 7, Hamid Abdoli in Dezful, Seyed Taha Hosseini in Bukan, Shahram Goudarzi, and Taher Shabani in Aligudarz were executed.
On April 9, eight more prisoners were hanged: Bahram Hedavandkhani, Salar Amirjalali, Abolfazl Karimi, and one other prisoner in Qezelhessar Prison in Karaj; Kambiz Fathi in Kermanshah; Gholamreza Pardakhteh in Shahroud; Esmail Dahmardeh in Gonabad; and a 20-year-old youth in Gonbad-e Kavus.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
9 April 2025