Iran executed young man on false Israel spying charges

Iran late last month executed a young man accused of helping Israel carry out assassinations and bomb attacks, but a prominent activist, human rights groups and a leaked call from the condemned prisoner indicate the charges were false.

Mohsen Langarneshin, a 32-year-old network security engineer, was executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison on April 30 on charges of “waging war against God” and “spreading corruption on Earth,” according to the judiciary’s media outlet Mizan.

Beyond vague headlines in state-controlled outlets, few details of his background and case were publicly available. But rights activist Ryma Shirmohammadi and sources close to Langarneshin told Iran International that the case was fabricated, his trial deeply flawed and confessions he made were extracted under torture.

Iranian authorities were so keen to round up suspects amid serial Israeli intelligence breaches, Shirmohammadi said, that they accused him of being involved in the death of a top missile general they have publicly insisted died by accident.

“This case was manufactured,” Shirmohammadi said. “He was executed on charges of espionage without a shred of material evidence. The case was built entirely on forced confessions extracted under extreme physical and psychological torture.”

“Mohsen was an easy target for them. They tortured him to gain confessions out of him and he didn’t even tell anyone and fell for their lies that they would spare his life if he complied,” a source close to Langarneshin told Iran International.

Accidental blast

According to Shirmohammadi, Langarneshin was accused of involvement in three high-profile incidents: the 2011 explosion that killed the architect of Iran’s missile program Brigadier General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the 2022 assassination of Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei in Tehran and a 2023 bombing at a munitions factory in Isfahan.

Tehrani Moghaddam, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), played a central role in developing Iran’s long-range missile arsenal and was widely regarded as the father of Iran’s missile program.

In 2011, he died alongside over a dozen others in a blast west of Tehran - a huge blow to Iran's military establishment but one officials conceded was an accidental detonation during weapons testing.

“At the time (of Tehrani Mohaddam's death), Mohsen was just 19 years old and had no known link to the incident,” Shirmohammadi said.

Shirmohammadi also dismissed allegations tying Langarneshin to the 2022 assassination of Quds Force officer Sayyad Khodaei.

“In the 2022 assassination of Colonel Sayyad Khodaei, Mohsen was accused of conducting surveillance using a motorcycle,” she said. “But he was living in Isfahan at the time, not Tehran, and there is extensive documentation — CCTV footage, phone records, vehicle ownership — proving his absence from the crime scene.”

Langarneshin was also accused of being involved in a 2023 bombing in Isfahan. “But Mohsen had already moved to Tehran well before the incident,” she said. “Again, workplace footage and telecom records confirm this. Another individual was arrested and executed for that very bombing, which raises serious questions about duplicated or fabricated charges.”

Langarneshin had previously worked under contract as a network security engineer at Imam Hossein University, a US-designated military-linked institution controlled by the IRGC that trains specialists in cyber defense, intelligence and missile technology.

“Mohsen had a brief professional association with Imam Hossein University — an IRGC-affiliated institution,” Shirmohammadi said. “That link gave intelligence agencies just enough of a pretext to cast suspicion on him, years later.”

But she said his affiliation ended after 2019 protests which started over fuel price hikes but quickly turned political. They were quashed by authorities with deadly force.

“Mohsen made a principled decision to resign from the university following the bloody crackdown on protesters in November 2019,” she said. “He could no longer, in good conscience, be affiliated with institutions tied to state violence. That act of integrity may have marked him as politically unreliable in the eyes of the regime.”

Shirmohammadi believes Langarneshin was ultimately targeted not for what he did, but his profile fit what investigators were seeking in a defendant.

“The intelligence services were under pressure to deliver ‘results,’ especially in cases involving alleged foreign plots,” she said.

“Mohsen’s international travel history, financial independence through his car business, and technical expertise all made him an easy target — someone who could be cast into a ready-made narrative of espionage, even when the evidence said otherwise.”

Call from Evin Prison

In a recorded phone call from Evin Prison, a copy of which was obtained by Iran International, Langarneshin described being psychologically tortured in a Ministry of Intelligence safehouse the night of his arrest.

His captors, he said, threatened him with flogging, forced him to write false confessions and later filmed him admitting to his alleged crimes based on their cues.

“They told me to say I bought a motorbike, mounted a camera on it and went to film,” he said in the call. “That was very odd — there was never any mention of what kind of motorbike it was or where it came from. I never did that. They made me say it anyway.”

After resisting, he said he was blindfolded, chained in a schoolyard, and filmed again. “They said, ‘This video is for before your execution. If you read the confession we wrote, maybe we’ll change your sentence to life imprisonment.’”

Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court—referred to by dissidents as the “hanging judge” for his record of issuing numerous death sentences in politically sensitive cases—and upheld by the Supreme Court.

All three retrial requests were rejected — the last one dismissed within two days and without explanation.

His father, Massoud Langarneshin, released a video the day before the execution, calling the case “full of flaws, ambiguities and questions.” His mother also confirmed she had her final visit with Mohsen that same day and appealed for help.

Several human rights groups including Norway based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) condemned the hanging, which IHR said took place alongside several other prisoners," said IHRNGO Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

“We must raise the cost of these extrajudicial killings for the authorities through strong international reactions and widespread protest.”

Shirmohammadi said Iranian authorities refused to tell Langarneshin family where he was buried and had forced them to delete all their social media posts.

“Mohsen’s family is being forced into silence by intelligence agents. They have been told not to speak to the media about Mohsen. Only if they obey the conditions set by the intelligence agents are they willing to disclose his burial site,” another source told Iran International.

After eleven days of uncertainty, Shirmohammadi confirmed that Langarneshin had been buried in Behesht Zahra cemetery in south Tehran, alongside other executed political prisoners.