A woman walks past a mural depicting a U.S. Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) painted on the exterior walls of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran, colloquially known as the "Spy Den," on April 8, 2025. (Credit: Atta Kenare/AFP.)
Five men accused of belonging to banned Sunni Muslim groups have been executed in Iran, according to NGOs describing them as 'political prisoners' sentenced to death after an unfair trial.
The five men were hanged Wednesday at Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, a city in the east of the country, without their families being notified in advance or being able to make a final visit, said Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) in a statement.
'These prisoners were subjected to torture and sentenced to death following an unfair trial,' said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, who described the five men as 'political prisoners.' Four of them belonged to Iran's Sunni Muslim community, a minority group in the Shiite-majority Islamic Republic.
One of the executed men was Shiite. All had been arrested in 2015 as part of a decade-old case and were convicted of 'baghi,' a charge of 'rebellion' under Iranian Islamic law, due to their affiliation with banned Sunni Muslim groups. Three of their co-defendants in the same case were also executed in December 2020.
'Five more men are dead (...) after sham trials that had no semblance of legality or fairness,' said Behnam Daraeizadeh, a researcher at the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), based in New York. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), based in the U.S., reported that the families only learned of the executions through phone calls and they were still waiting outside the prison to receive the bodies of their loved ones.
Iran, the country with the highest number of executions after China, has already executed 245 people this year, according to IHR, which warned of a troubling increase in the number of executions.
