Arrests, hangings, blackout: Iran cranks up wartime repression

A man inspects the damage at a mosque that was targeted in an Israeli strike in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Sir on April 21. Photo / Anwar Amro, AFP

Iran has stepped up repression during the Middle East war with high-profile executions and hundreds of arrests, activists said, urging Washington to put human rights at the centre of any talks with the Islamic republic.

There has been no let-up during the two-week ceasefire now due to end, with hangings of convicts seen as political prisoners a near-daily occurrence and people arrested on charges such as simply sending videos to a media outlet abroad, according to rights groups.

This has come against the background of severe internet restrictions that monitor Netblocks said was a blackout that had now left Iranians disconnected from global networks for 53 days.

“The immediate release of all political prisoners arrested before or after the outbreak of the war must be a central condition of any agreement with the Islamic republic,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR).

The group said today that at least 3646 people had been arrested since the war broke out on February 28, with at least 767 of the cases reported after the start of the ceasefire on April 8.

Charges include espionage, transmitting images or co-ordinates of sensitive locations to foreign-based media, attempting to establish operational cells or possessing a Starlink internet terminal.

Iranian authorities today also executed an eighth man over protests in January, which rights groups said were put down in a deadly crackdown that left thousands of people dead.

Amir Ali Mirjafari was accused of setting fire to the Gholhak Grand Mosque and also of working with the Israeli espionage agency Mossad, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.

Since executions resumed on March 19, Iranian authorities have also executed eight members, all men, of the People’s Mujahedin (MEK) opposition group, which is banned in Iran.

IHR warned that there was a risk of more executions with “hundreds of protesters currently facing death penalty charges, with at least 30 having already been sentenced to death”.

Iran’s hardline judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, who ordered fast-track trials for those arrested over the protests, said yesterday that those deemed to “co-operate with a hostile aggressor” will be treated “without leniency”.

Silence on fate of Iranians

As the clock ticked to the end of the ceasefire, United States President Donald Trump told Iran it could boost the chances of success in peace talks with Washington by freeing eight women that he said face execution.

It was still unclear whether the talks would go ahead.

Trump’s statement accompanied a reposting of a claim on X by a pro-Israel youth activist in the US that eight women faced death by hanging. Photographs of eight unnamed women were posted.

According to rights groups including the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre, one woman named as Bita Hemmati has been sentenced to death over the protests on charges of throwing concrete blocks from a building on to police.

IHR and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said last week that Iran in 2025 executed at least 48 women, the highest number recorded in more than 20 years.

IHR said more than 100 civil society activists had been arrested since the war broke out, including prize-winning rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was detained on April 2.

Sotoudeh’s daughter Mehraveh Khandan wrote on Instagram last weekend that her mother had telephoned for the first time since her arrest, saying she was being held by the Intelligence Ministry but was not allowed to disclose where.

“The Islamic republic showed in January that it has no qualms about killing protesters on a massive scale,” said Roya Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre.

“In that context, the silence around the fate of Iranians in the current negotiations can only reassure the regime that the political cost of another mass crackdown will be low,” she said.

-Agence France-Presse