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A U.S.-based human rights organization focused on Iran says more than 600 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of the year. Dozens of them were political prisoners or protesters who participated in anti-government demonstrations in January. Rights groups say the executions are part of an intensified campaign to quell dissent as a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran remains fragile. Durrie Bouscaren reports from Istanbul.
DURRIE BOUSCAREN, BYLINE: Every morning, Afrooz Maghzi wakes up and checks the news. And most mornings, she sees the name of another person hanged in Iran.
AFROOZ MAGHZI: To wake up and see every day an execution of political prisoners and protesters, and many of them actually very young.
BOUSCAREN: Maghzi is a human rights lawyer based in Germany who offers pro bono legal advice for the families of Iranian prisoners facing the death penalty. And lately, there are a lot of them.
MAGHZI: I think, actually, the brutality of execution is not comparable to anything. And they're just people like all of us with the same demand, with the same dreams.
BOUSCAREN: During the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022, Maghzi and her team at Follow Up Iran (ph), an activist group, fielded a total of 30 calls from families of protesters who'd been detained, asking for help. Then in January of this year, after authorities opened fire on widespread demonstrations, killing thousands and imprisoning more than 53,000 people, the floodgates opened.
MAGHZI: But this time, actually, every day, each of the lawyers had 10 calls from all over Iran. And it was really - it was so difficult to handle it, you know, emotionally, I have to say.
BOUSCAREN: The head of Iran's judiciary called for speedy trials, saying there would be no, quote, "mercy" shown to those not worthy of it. When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, the Iranian government cut off the internet and those calls stopped.
MAGHZI: Officially, they're accused of espionage for Israel, collaboration with foreign state or terrorism. But when you look at the actual files, these are ordinary citizens.
BOUSCAREN: Ordinary people who wrote something critical on social media, filmed the aftermath of a bombing or who used a satellite internet connection like Starlink to get online, despite the internet blackout, or who were simply at the wrong place and the wrong time, like 30-year-old Peyvand Naimi.
SAMA SABET: My mom kept saying over the phone that - how gentle he is and how noble he is and the tenderness of his heart.
BOUSCAREN: Sama Sabet is one of Naimi's cousins. He worked as a dog trainer in Kerman, a city in southern Iran. He was arrested from his workplace on January 8 as major demonstrations swept the whole country. Naimi is Baha'i, part of the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran, a group that has long been persecuted by the government.
SABET: They basically suggested that he is the enemy of the state, he's the enemy of God.
BOUSCAREN: Sabet believes that is why her cousin was accused of killing three Basij - or paramilitary officers - and later, of rejoicing when the supreme leader was killed in an airstrike.
SABET: Which is, again, so preposterous because he was already in prison on the 8th of January. So how could he have been out there in the protests being accused of killing the three Basij forces?
BOUSCAREN: Sabet says Naimi was tortured until he confessed. In prison, he told visitors that at least twice he had a noose placed around his neck and was told to say a final prayer, a mock execution.
SABET: They almost pushed the stool beneath him.
BOUSCAREN: This fits a familiar pattern that is getting worse, says Raha Bahreini, a human rights attorney with Amnesty International in London.
RAHA BAHREINI: Patterns that we've documented include prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, mock executions and the use of sexual violence in order to crush the spirit of detainees.
BOUSCAREN: Bahreini says that confessions extracted under torture are being used to convict and execute detainees just weeks after their arrest. In 2025, Iran executed more people than it had in any single year since 1989. But the past months, Bahreini says, have marked a horrific escalation.
BAHREINI: That is the reason that Amnesty has concluded that these executions amount to arbitrary deprivation of the right to life and constitute arbitrary executions.
BOUSCAREN: Bahreini says it's an attempt by Iran's judicial system to use the death penalty to crush dissent, show its power and keep a tight grip on society in wartime.
For NPR News, I'm Durrie Bouscaren in Istanbul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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