7th Public Execution in Iran in 2023

According to IRNA, a man was hanged publicly in Najaf Abad in Isfahan on 28 December. The unnamed man was charged with murdering a policeman during a bank robbery around 19 years ago. He was on the run for 11 years before being arrested and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder.

2021 was the first year in over a decade during which no public executions were carried out by the Islamic Republic. This followed 2020 when only one execution was recorded, which was the lowest number since 2008, when Iran Human Rights started its systematic monitoring of executions in Iran. There is no indication that the decline in the number of public executions were the result of policy change, but rather a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. In 2022, public executions returned to the streets of Iran with two people publicly executed. Today’s execution was the seventh public execution in 2023, with four carried out in a week in July.