Despite the demands of human rights defenders, Iran hanged four political prisoners at dawn on Monday, January 29. Their names were Mohsen Mazloum, Hazhir Faramarzi, Vafa Azarbar and Pezhman Fatehi, and all were of Kurdish origin. Arrested in July 2023 in the northwestern Iranian town of Ouroumieh, they were accused by Tehran of collaborating with Israel, the Islamic Republic's sworn enemy, and of planning a sabotage operation at a factory in Isfahan.
According to the Iranian regime, the four men were arrested prior to the operation. Their families, however, deny the accusations, stating that they were tortured while being held in an unknown location. Amnesty International denounced the executions, which come "against a backdrop of an alarming increase in the number of executions by the Iranian authorities, used as a tool of political repression against protesters, dissidents and oppressed ethnic minorities, in particular Kurds and Baluchis, who are disproportionately targeted by the death penalty."
For over a year, Iran has been carrying out a record number of executions, the majority of which have been people accused of being linked to drug trafficking. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), in 2023, at least 746 people were executed by the Iranian judiciary, an 68% increase from the previous year. Already in November 2023, the Iran Human Rights organization denounced the highest annual number of executions in eight years. Political executions have also increased.
A few months after the arrest of the four Iranians killed on Monday, national television broadcast a video in which they confessed to the charges brought against them. According to their families and human rights organizations, the confessions were extracted under torture, a practice frequently used by Tehran. During the trial, according to the relatives of the four condemned to death, they were denied access to the lawyer of their choice and were represented by lawyers imposed by the judiciary, which deprived the defendants of the possibility of a fair defense.
In an interview with Iran Human Rights on January 27, Joanna Taimsi, Mazloum's wife, explained that her husband and his three friends spent a year and a half in prison without their families having any information about their place of detention or their state of health: "A few days ago, our lawyer learned of the death sentence [for the first time] for my husband and that of his friends. It was confirmed within 24 hours by the Supreme Court." Taimsi explained that neither her husband nor the three other detainees had weapons and that their activities were purely political and linked to the Komala party, an Iranian Kurdish opposition group in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan. Historically, Komala led an armed insurrection against Tehran, but in recent years, its military activity has declined.
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