On May 20, 2023, four inmates convicted of drug-related crimes were executed in Ghezel Hesar prison, Karaj.
HRANA has identified them as Saeed Geravand, Samad Geravand, Shahab Mansouri Nasab and Shahram Sharghi.
A knowledgeable informant speaking to HRANA revealed that a number of inmates had initiated a hunger strike in protest of the escalating number of executions. Prior to their scheduled executions, these four inmates, along with three others, were relocated to solitary confinement, as reported by HRANA earlier.
At the time of writing, no official sources or domestic media outlets within the country have reported on these executions.
In recent weeks, the number of execution has been alarmingly raised.
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.