Iran’s judiciary executed seven political prisoners, including one Kurdish man in Sanandaj, western Iran, and six ethnic Arab inmates in Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province in the south, on Saturday, according to the judiciary’s official news agency.
Saman Mohammadi Khiyareh, a Kurdish political prisoner from Sanandaj in western Iran, was executed after more than 15 years in detention, the Mizan news agency reported. Hours earlier, the Hengaw human rights group said he had been transferred from Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, near Tehran, to solitary confinement for execution.
Mohammadi Khiyareh was first arrested in February 2010 and sentenced to death by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on charges of moharebeh—“enmity against God.” The Supreme Court initially overturned the ruling, replacing it with a 15-year prison term for alleged membership in opposition groups. However, following pressure from security agencies, the court reinstated the death sentence after a retrial.
Six ethnic Arab prisoners executed in southern Iran
Mizan also reported the execution of six people in Khuzestan Province on security-related charges but withheld their names, a move that rights groups said makes the cases “secret executions.” The men had been convicted of “killing police officers, communicating with Israel, separatism, bombings, and armed attacks,” the judiciary said.
Without presenting evidence, the judiciary accused them of involvement in attacks on a gas station in Khorramshahr, bank assaults, grenade attacks on a military center, and shootings at mosques.
The Karun Human Rights Organization later identified the executed prisoners as Ali Majdam, Moein Khanfari, Salem Mousavi, Mohammadreza Moghaddam, Adnan Alboshokeh (Ghobeishavi), and Habib Dris.
According to Karun, the men were arrested between late 2018 and early 2019 and later sentenced to death by the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court for alleged membership in opposition groups.
The defendants’ confessions appeared to have been obtained under unclear circumstances, Hengaw and the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) both reported.
These six Arab political prisoners were accused of killing two Basij members in Abadan, a police officer, and a conscript soldier in Bandar Imam Khomeini.
Amnesty International had earlier warned of imminent executions, noting that the defendants were denied legal representation during the hearings.
Surge in executions
Rights groups reported a sharp rise in executions across Iran in September 2025. Hengaw said it documented at least 187 executions during the month, while Iran Human Rights put the figure at 171, the highest monthly count in two decades.
Only 10 of those executions—less than six percent—were officially announced, Iran Human Rights said. Most were related to drug or murder charges, while three were for moharebeh or espionage.
The group warned that the surge marks an unprecedented pace of executions in the past 30 years, recording more than 1,040 executions in the first nine months of 2025—double the number during the same period last year.
The deportations were part of a larger operation that returned 120 Iranians from US custody to Tehran.
Ali Herischi, an immigration attorney at Maryland-based Herischi & Associates, told Iran International that one of his clients is a political dissident and the other a Christian convert.
Both had crossed into the United States from the border with Mexico to claim asylum. The dissident’s wife, who recently gave birth in the United States, is now caring for their three-month-old child alone.
“She is devastated,” Herischi said. “There’s significant uncertainty about the future and when they can reunite.”
Herischi said neither client consented to deportation, warning that their files, phones and documents were handed to Iranian authorities.
“Unfortunately, their belongings — including their files, evidence and cell phones — have been handed to Iranian authorities. That’s very dangerous.”
The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond an Iran International request for comment.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that a US-chartered flight carrying over 100 Iranians left a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to pick up additional deportees, and then continued to Doha, Qatar, before the passengers were transferred onto another chartered flight to Tehran.
Herischi estimates as many as 220 people were deported, though some were left in Qatar. The deportees, he added, were denied the chance to fully argue their asylum cases per rules during the Trump presidency that restricts claims by those who entered through the southern border.
‘Pick your poison'
Earlier this year, the United States deported another group of Iranians — many of them Christian converts — to Costa Rica and Panama, despite the risk of persecution they could face back home.
According to Herischi, deportees were sometimes presented with a choice: “ICE would say, 'either you consent to deportation to Iran, or we send you to Somalia or Sudan.' It was, 'pick your poison.' In the case of my clients, they didn’t even get that. They just said, you’re done, let’s go.”
The deportation flight, The New York Times reported, followed “months of negotiations” between Washington and Tehran, citing two senior Iranian officials involved in the talks and a US official with knowledge of the plans.
According to the Times, the State Department first approached Iran’s interests section in Washington about coordinating deportations three months ago. Iran had to verify identities and issue travel documents for some detainees.
Herischi said, “We need to know what has been exchanged in price of deportation of those individuals... Whether Iran had any influence on the list of deportees or set the priority of who is going to accept.”
The move, Herischi added, risks normalizing Iran’s human rights record and undermining America’s stated commitment to protecting persecuted minorities. “It’s like, oh, it’s just a normal country, why do we care? That’s not right.”
