Ismail Mirzadeh never imagined that the fate of his son Jilan would be sealed simply, Just as he does on any normal day, the 17-year-old left his home in Mahabad, in western Iran. He vanished into thin air until one day his name surfaced in a phone call: “He’s been executed. You will not receive the body.” Mirzadeh says authorities arrested his son near a gathering of protesters in the Kurdish city of Mahabad in 2022. At the time, cities across Iran were gripped by demonstrations protesting the death of the Kurdish young woman Mahsa Amini. She was detained by the morality police for allegedly violating head-cover rules. Thousands of Iranians poured into the streets under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,” with teenage boys and girls usually at the forefront. Many later found themselves inside revolutionary courtrooms, facing charges of murder, espionage, and endangering national security—accusations that often lead to the gallows. Jilan was one of them, alongside Omid Rahmani and dozens of others whose families still do not know what became of them.
Iran carries out four executions a day—a practice which rights groups say is meant to terrorize the entire population. A September 2025 report from the human-rights news agency HRANA– which is part of the U.S.-based Association of Human Rights Activists in Iran, found that the crackdown from September to December 2022 to suppress the Woman, Life, Freedom protests resulted in 552 people killed and 34,000 arrested. Twelve protesters have been executed so far, and another eight remain on death row. At first, Jilan’s father had no idea his son had been sentenced to death. Authorities never informed the family. Only months later and while following up on the case, he learned that his son had been convicted of killing a security officer and given a death sentence. “My son wasn’t a killer. He was only seventeen when they executed him. The authorities denied us the right to hire a lawyer. I did everything I could to have him released temporarily. I paid money to several local officials but only managed to see him once. He was tormented until worn out,” the father says.
The family was never notified of the execution date. A few days after the execution, a court clerk called briefly to say Jilan had been executed. The government refused to hand over the body. By the end of 2024—months after the execution— Jilan’s family fled Iran lest they would be arrested on charges of “supporting the protests.” They took refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, awaiting a chance to relocate to Europe. Jilan’s story is similar to that of Omid Rahmani, who was arrested at the age of 16 during the 2022 protests. Omid’s family managed, after repeated attempts and a large bribe, to secure a temporary release for their son. He used the opportunity to escape to Iraqi Kurdistan and then to a European country. “I was arrested in Urmia where I joined other school students in the protests. They kept us for months in an overcrowded room inside the quarter of the secret police. We were tortured daily—every kind of torture you can imagine—and forced to confess that we were instigated and supported by the West to organize the protests,” Rahmani tells Alhurra. He considers himself lucky to have escaped before trial, unlike many of his peers. “My family learned that once my three-month temporary release expired, I would be sentenced to life in prison. They paid a large sum to a revolutionary court official to secure the temporary release that allowed me to flee.”
Data from the DC-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran shows that Iranian authorities executed 194 people in November alone, bringing the total number of executions in 2025 to 1,571. A report published in May by Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), which is based in Norway, said 110 executions had taken place in Iran, while the government formally acknowledging only two. The group noted that three of those executed may have been minors and is working to verify their ages at the time of the alleged crimes. Iranian Kurdish activist Jino Beikzadeh Babameri says targeting people under 18 is deliberate because they represent “the future and frontline of the protest movement in Iran.” “Teenagers were at the forefront of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. Their arrest and execution sends a clear message of intimidation: even your children are not safe,” she tells Alhurra.
For years now Babameri has been living outside Iran. She monitors violations of human-rights through a network of activists on the ground. She is primarily focused on defending those sentenced to death. She hopes that amplifying the voices of the victims’ families internationally would bring pressure on the authorities to halt the executions. She says that confessions are routinely coerced from arrested young men and teenagers who are not aware of their legal rights and who are denied legal counsel or any form of legal protection during detention. She adds that the authorities, in a bid to frame these executions are criminal justice and not political suppression, are increasingly recategorizing protest-related charges as criminal offenses—like murder or drug trafficking—especially against marginalized groups such as Kurds and Baluchis.” Under Iranian law, criminal responsibility is tied to the age of religious puberty—set at nine lunar years for girls (about 8.7 years) and fifteen lunar years for boys (about 14.6 years).
Iranian political activist Media Izedeh says executions—especially of minors—have inflicted deep psychological trauma on families and communities. “Politically, the sheer number of executions has deepened public distrust in the judicial and security institutions and exacerbated internal political paralysis,” he tells Alhurra. Izedeh, who lives in Europe and has spent years documenting Iranian migration and human-rights abuses, says thousands of Iranian families have had to flee over the past decade—to Europe, the United States, and neighboring countries—amid escalating state violence against youths and teenagers.
Last October, Amnesty International urged UN member states to confront Iran’s “shocking wave of executions” with the urgency the situation requires. In a report published on its website, Hussein Bayoumi, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty, said: “More than 1,000 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025—an average of four executions per day.” Bayoumi added that Iran increasingly uses the death penalty as a weapon to spread fear, crush dissent, and punish marginalized communities. He said the number of executions this year has reached a level unseen since 1989.
