On February 20, Hassan Abyat was executed in Sepidar Prison, Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province. Abyat was previously sentenced to death by the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court for “enmity against God (moharebeh).”

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, on February 20, 2023, Hassan Abyat, age 44, was executed in Sepidar Prison.

Karim Dahimi, a political activist and human rights defender focused on Iran’s Arab communities, told HRANA that, “Abyat was previously sentenced to death by Branch 1 of the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court, presided by Judge Farhadvand, for moharebeh.”

“Along with dozens of protestors, Abyat was arrested over protests in Khuzestan Province on April 15, 2011, on the anniversary of 2005 unrests”, he added.

According to Dahimi, Abyat and five others were detained under torture in the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention facility in Ahvaz for over 11 months. At the time, Iranian state-owned Press TV aired several videos of their coerced confessions.

In 2022, the Department of Statistics and Publication of Human Rights Activists in Iran registered 457 reports related to the death penalty. This included 92 death sentences, including the conviction of 6 people to public execution and 565 execution sentences were carried out, 2 of which have been carried out in public. Based on the announced identifications of some of the executed individuals, 501 were male and 11 were female. In addition, 5 juvenile offenders were executed in 2022, meaning they were under the age of 18 at the time they committed the crime.