The crowd gathered at dawn in Beyram, a dusty town of roughly 8,000 residents that serves as capital to the remote Fars Province of southern Iran. Men were allowed to stand at the front, surrounding a shoulder-high platform where the action would take place.
Towards the back were their wives, clad in jet black robes, alongside dozens of small children.
As the sun rose over the nearby mountains, a man named Sajad Molayi Hakani was frogmarched on to the makeshift stage, wearing a blindfold, with both hands tied behind his back. Then a noose was put around his neck.
A video of proceedings shows the other end of the rope being attached to a yellow crane. Seconds later, it was pulled tight, lifting Hakani several metres in the air. Several minutes passed before he stopped kicking. Throughout the grisly process, onlookers offer occasional applause, along with isolated cheers.
Hakani, who died on August 19, is one of at least 1,000 people who have been executed in Iran so far this year during what opposition activists have dubbed a ‘mass killing campaign’ orchestrated by the Islamic theocracy’s mullahs.
Astonishing details of the blood-letting were laid bare this week by the Iran Human Rights Organisation, an independent lobby group based in Norway.
It believes the country’s government has chosen to dramatically increase its use of the death penalty to crush dissent, having been rocked by three popular uprisings in the past eight years.
The IHRO’s detailed report describes this show of ruthlessness – unprecedented even by the standards of a country which has for years put more of its citizens to death, per capita, than anywhere else in the world – as a ‘crime against humanity… the dimensions of which, in the absence of any serious international reactions, are expanding every day’.
At least 1,000 people who have been executed in Iran so far this year during what opposition activists have dubbed a ‘mass killing campaign’ orchestrated by the Islamic theocracy’s mullahs
Unlike other methods of execution, hanging involves a slow and drawn-out death which can take up to 45 minutes
Things have lately escalated to the point where 64 people were executed in the past week alone, it says, ‘a rate of more than nine hangings per day’.
Cranes, which are used in the vast majority of Iran’s public hangings, contribute to the horrifying spectacles, say campaigners Amnesty International.
Unlike old-fashioned methods of execution – which involve weighing a prisoner to determine the length of drop necessary to ensure a quick death by snapping the neck – they result in a victim being lifted off the ground so that they slowly perish via suffocation.
It’s a process which the pressure group says ‘can take 45 minutes’.
A few years back, the fate of a convicted drug smuggler named Alireza M sparked international attention. He was hanged from a noose attached to a crane for 12 minutes, before being pronounced dead by a watching doctor.
The following day, workers in the mortuary at Bojnurd prison noticed steam inside Alireza M’s body bag, and realised that he was still breathing.
State news outlets reported that he was transferred to hospital and survived, before having his sentence reduced to life imprisonment by Ayatollahs, who decided that it was ‘Allah’s will’ that he survived.
More recent victims tend to fall into one of three categories. Some are political dissidents, who are usually convicted of ‘mofsed-e-filarz,’ which broadly translates as ‘corruption on earth’ and generally involves doing something that might undermine the regime.
Protesters in the Netherlands voicing their support for Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who had his death sentence overturned last year
Among those recently sentenced to death for this crime is Toomaj Salehi, a rap musician known as ‘the Tupac of Iran’ whose songs poke fun at the country’s ruling class. He’d been arrested after voicing support for anti-government protests in 2022.
In April last year, a court decided that his ‘propaganda against the state’ was so severe that he ought to hang. Global outrage ensued, resulting in a U-turn by the mullahs, who agreed to release Salehi from prison in December.
Most executions are either for drug offences (Iran has more opioid addicts than any other country) or murder.
To blame for most of those death sentences is a system of Sharia law named Qisas, under which relatives of murder victims are allowed to demand blood-money payments from their killers.
If insufficient cash is forthcoming, they can insist that the perpetrator of the crime is hanged.
This can lead to bizarre and often dramatic public spectacles, with about 350 hangings cancelled at the last minute after families dropped their demands.
In one case a woman slapped her son’s killer as he was standing on a chair on the gallows with the noose around his neck. She then announced that she’d decided to pardon him after all.
The condemned man, called Balal, had killed a former friend, Abdolah Hosseinzadeh in a street fight with a knife.
His execution was scheduled for April 15, 2014, in the northern city of Noor. But as prison guards fixed the noose around his neck Abdolah’s mother slapped his face and then had a change of heart.
‘After that, I felt as if rage vanished within my heart,’ she said. ‘I felt as if the blood in my veins began to flow again.
‘I burst into tears and I called my husband and asked him to come up and remove the noose.’ Within seconds of her husband Abdolghani unhooking the rope from Balal’s neck, he was declared pardoned by local officials. Several police officers were seen to cry.
In another, last year, a man named Ahmad Alizadeh was hanged for 28 seconds, only to be brought down and resuscitated at the request of his victim’s family. He was returned to prison, only to be hanged again weeks later, after the family changed their mind.
Sajad Molayi Hakani is among those who were executed after Qisas negotiations failed.
He was found guilty of murdering a mother and three of her children during a botched robbery last October. Also convicted of the crime was his wife Masha Akbari. She is apparently due to be executed in private.
‘The Qisas sentence of the second defendant in this case, the wife of the first defendant, will be carried out in prison in the presence of the victims’ next of kin,’ read a statement by Sadrallah Rajaei, head of the Fars judiciary.
There are, of course, those who would argue that – in a case of brutal murder – the death penalty fits the crime.
The problem is Iran has no justice system to speak of.
The concept of a jury trial does not exist. Criminal investigations are instead overseen by a single judge, who then presides over the trial of whatever suspect ends up being arrested.
He (and it is always a ‘he’) also decides whether the defendant is guilty or innocent and chooses what sentence to impose. Little wonder that upwards of 95 per cent of trials result in a conviction. Or that in 45 per cent of cases where someone is sentenced to death, the accused is not even allowed to present their case, the IHRO reports.
Meanwhile, in about half of the court cases that result in someone being sent to the gallows, the entire trial takes less than 45 minutes. A significant number then revolve around forced confessions obtained via torture. And if witnesses are called, Iranian law dictates that a man’s testimony is twice as reliable as a woman’s.
This particular policy, derived from a rigid interpretation of the Koran, has led to several high-profile miscarriages of justice, including the execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old interior designer convicted of killing a man who was trying to rape her.
Ms Jabbari insisted that the man, a former intelligence official named Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, had lured her to his house on the pretext of wanting help redecorating an office, before launching the attack. She claimed to have then stabbed him in the back with a penknife. But a male friend of Sarbandi disputed her version of events, and was taken at his word by the judge.
Another notorious case, which made headlines in 2021, centred on a 27-year-old married man who was sentenced to death after his wife discovered messages on his phone suggesting he’d had an affair with an unmarried 33-year-old woman.
The wife later sought to withdraw the complaint against her husband, and asked the court to spare his life. Unfortunately, this placed her at odds with the 33-year-old woman’s father, who still wanted him to hang. Because the father was male, his demand took precedence. ‘It is beyond sad that in the 21st-century, ISIS is still in power in my beautiful country,’ was how Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American women’s campaigner, responded to the ensuing execution.
‘Under Iran’s penal code, adultery is a crime against God for both men and women. It is punishable by 100 lashes for unmarried men and women, but married offenders are sentenced to death.’
Iran’s medieval-style penal code offers a hair-raising insight into life under the ayatollahs, listing at least 80 offences which can carry the death penalty.
They include adultery, homosexuality, apostasy and blasphemy. Plus something called ‘tafkhiz,’ which refers to ‘inter-cultural’ sex. In these cases, perpetrators are only executed when the ‘active party’ is non-muslim and the ‘passive party’ is muslim. If a muslim man sleeps with a non-muslim woman, he is merely imprisoned.
The standard punishment for adultery is ‘stoning’ according to Article 225 of the Penal Code. However, it can be upgraded to hanging if a court rules it ‘not possible to perform stoning.’
A hundred lashes are also standard punishment for having a lesbian affair. However, Article 238 of the Penal code states that if someone is convicted four times of that offence, they must be put to death. Elsewhere, a two-tier approach to justice applies in cases of ‘sodomy’. They only result in the ‘active party’ getting a death sentence if he is married or committing rape. However the ‘passive party’ gets a death penalty regardless. As does any non-muslim who has sex with a muslim in any circumstances.
The Qisas system also values life differently depending on a victim’s gender. The starting rate for buying your way out of a hanging is about £12,000 if you have murdered a muslim man, but half that if you kill a muslim woman.
There are also some handy exemptions. A man who kills his wife because he thinks she’s having an affair gets immunity from execution. As do people who kill someone who isn’t muslim.
Children can also be sentenced to death, if they have reached the age of criminal responsibility: 15 for boys but just nine for girls.
Nine is also the age at which Iranian girls can be subjected to arranged marriages, usually to much older men, though most wait until they are at least 13.
The IHRO report says that a total of 8,800 people have been executed in Iran since 2010, but the number has been steadily rising. It hit 834 in 2023 and 975 last year, when victims included 31 women and one child, along with five people who were handicapped (in the first six months of this year, 29 women were executed).
The document’s foreword, by Javaid Rehman, the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, tells how during the years he monitored the country: ‘Executions included those of women, some of them reportedly raped before their executions, and a very large number of children.’
The most recent victims include Babak Shahbazi, a 44-year-old father of two who was hanged last week after being convicted of spying for Israel while working as an industrial refrigeration installer.
He allegedly used his job to gather information from sensitive locations, which was then passed on to Israel. Evidence against him included the fact that he knew how to use Microsoft Word, which the court decided represented proof he was spying for Mossad.
In July, two high-profile prominent opposition activists –Behrouz Ehsani, 69, and Mehdi Hassani, 68 – were killed in Ghezel Hesar prison, near Tehran.
A letter passed to democracy activists by cellmates said that plain-clothes officers had entered the prison early one Saturday morning on the pretext of ‘checking the water outage’ before being joined by 50 colleagues who began attacking prisoners with batons.
‘Several agents tied prisoners’ hands behind their backs, dragged them out, and slammed them against the main corridor wall. Outside the hall, masked agents lined the way to the Unit 4 exit,’ read the letter ‘In the special ward of Unit 1, Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani were executed without delay. We learned of it five days later.’
In the face of this ongoing slaughter, the international community remains conspicuously silent. On Wednesday, Iran’s President, Masoud Pezeshkian was allowed to address the UN, describing his country as ‘a steadfast partner and a trustworthy companion for all peace-seeking countries of friendship.’
As he stood at the lectern, at least eight political prisoners were being executed, bringing the total for the last month to a record-breaking 200.
