Iran executed 7 convicts who had ties with Israel; they had been convicted of killing security personnel and a religious scholar a few years ago. With this, the number of executions carried out in 2025 has exceeded 1,000 on Saturday.
According to the British news agency ‘Reuters,’ Iran’s judiciary news agency Mizan reported that 6 individuals were separatists from the Arab ethnic minority, who were accused of carrying out armed attacks and bomb blasts in Khorramshahr, a city in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, in which 4 security personnel were killed.
The seventh person was Saman Mohammadi Khiyara, a Kurd, who was convicted in 2009 of killing pro-government Sunni scholar Mamousta Sheikh al-Islam in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj.
Mizan reported that these individuals had ties with Israel; however, this is an allegation rejected by human rights organizations. According to them, Tehran often levels such accusations against ethnic minorities to portray domestic dissent as foreign-backed.
Human rights activists have also raised questions about Mohammadi Khiyara’s case, as he was only 15 or 16 years old at the time of the murder, was arrested at the age of 19, and remained imprisoned for more than a decade before being executed.
They state that his conviction was based on confessions obtained through torture, a method activists regularly accuse Iranian courts of using.
According to Amnesty International, Iranian authorities have executed more than 1,000 people so far in 2025, the highest annual number recorded by the organization in at least 15 years.
