Hidden Toll: Letters and Videos from Iran’s Death Row Victims
Hanged in the Shadow of War: Voices from Iran’s Death Row
Testimony emerges from Babak Alipour, who spent three years on death row before being taken to gallows in March.
Among them was Behrouz Ehsani, 69, regarded as the elder figure of the group, who was remembered for never showing anger despite their dire circumstances. There was also Mehdi Hassani, a 48-year-old father of three, whom Alipour encountered a few times in the prison hospital. Hassani would often ask him to reassure his children that he was “fine.”
Despite the executions around him, Babak Alipour—a 34-year-old law graduate with a passion for mountaineering who had spent three years on death row—wrote in his neat, precise handwriting that he was not intimidated.
On 12 March he made a short video on a phone smuggled into his jail. “Dictators have come, been overthrown, died, and been killed, and now it is the turn of Khamenei-the-son’s dictatorship,” Alipour said of the accession of Mojtaba Khamenei to supreme leader after the death of Ali Khamenei in airstrikes by the US and Israel. By this time, Alipour’s brother Roozbeh, his sister Maryam, and mother Ommolbanin Dehghan had been arrested as they returned home from a vigil outside the prison in which he was being held.
Less than two weeks later, on March 31, Babak Alipour was transferred to Ghezel Hesar prison, located a short distance west of his previous detention site, where he was executed by hanging alongside his cellmate, Pouya Ghobadi, a 32-year-old electrical engineer. Like Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani, both men had been accused of involvement in an armed rebellion and alleged ties to the opposition group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI/MeK).
Alipour’s father, a farmer whose small clothing business had suffered due to Iran’s struggling economy, has been unable to recover his son’s body. Meanwhile, according to sources close to the family, Alipour’s brother has been missing for over a month.
Over the past month, Iran has carried out the execution of 16 men, including eight political prisoners and eight individuals linked to protests. The wave of state executions briefly slowed after the war involving Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu began on February 28, but the situation shifted again after March 18.
The youngest victim so far was 18-year-old Amirhossein Hatami, who was executed on April 2 after reportedly giving a forced confession to charges of moharebeh (“enmity against God”) and efsad-fil-arz (“corruption on earth”), linked to an alleged attack on a Revolutionary Guard base in Tehran during the January protests.
The most recent execution was that of Amirali Mirjafari, a 24-year-old student and computer technician, who was put to death on Tuesday over alleged involvement in the protests. According to human rights activists, at least 11 more political prisoners—aged between 23 and 68—remain on death row.
Reza Younesi, 45, is a chemistry professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, where he has lived for the past two decades. His younger brother, Ali Younesi, 26, an award-winning astronomy student, was arrested in Iran six years ago. Three years ago, their father, Yousef Younesi, 73, was also taken from his home. Both have been sentenced to prison over alleged links to the opposition group MeK.
A few weeks ago, concerns grew when their father suddenly disappeared within the prison system and stopped contacting the family. “We had no information for nine days,” Younesi said. “But yesterday he called my mother and told us he has been transferred to the same prison where my brother is currently held.”
For Reza Younesi, the greatest concern is how the Iranian regime may behave as the war continues. He described it as a system that becomes even more severe in times of conflict. According to him, authorities may act with little restraint toward prisoners, knowing that international organizations have limited ability to intervene and that global attention is often elsewhere.
Younesi believes the recent executions are being used as a tool to instill fear within the country. In his view, external military threats are not the regime’s main concern; rather, it is internal unrest that poses the greatest risk. By carrying out executions, he said, the authorities aim to discourage dissent and maintain control over the population.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, noted that the number of political prisoners executed in the past month is highly unusual. He explained that most executions in Iran typically involve criminal charges such as drug offenses or murder. However, he said the current wave appears intended to send a message of intimidation, especially at a time when the ongoing war has overshadowed global attention.
On Thursday, Donald Trump claimed he had convinced Tehran not to proceed with the execution of eight women. Iranian officials rejected this assertion, stating that no such executions were planned. So far, Trump has not publicly addressed the men who have already been executed.
In a final video reportedly recorded in prison, Babak Alipour, originally from the city of Amol northeast of Tehran, spoke about his hopes for a democratic and secular Iran. He suggested that the authorities were increasing executions under the cover of war to project strength and deter opposition. Despite this, he expressed confidence that change would eventually come, saying he believed a future of freedom and stability for the Iranian people was not far away.
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