Iran’s judiciary said early Saturday it executed Mehran Bahramian, a protester detained during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in central Iran, despite torture allegations and pleas from rights groups to stop the sentence.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency said the death sentence was carried out in Isfahan. Hours earlier, the Iran Human Rights Society reported his family had been summoned for a final visit.
Bahramian endured years in prison, where rights advocates say he was tortured.
He was finally sentenced to death, together with his brother, Fazel, after the Samirom Revolutionary Court convicted them of “enmity against God" over their alleged involvement in the killing of a member of the Revolutionary Guard's Basij paramilitary.
Rights groups say the case stems from unrest in Samirom in November 2022, when security forces killed at least three people — Abbasi, Morad Bahramian, and Moslem Houshangi — during nationwide demonstrations.
Their 40-day memorial in January 2023 turned into a mass protest in which a Basij force, Mohsen Rezaei, was killed, prompting a wave of arrests.
Mehran and Fazel Bahramian were detained 10 days later and held in solitary confinement at an IRGC detention center in Dolatabad, Isfahan. According to relatives, Mehran suffered broken ribs and a ruptured eardrum under interrogation, while Fazel sustained severe head and facial injuries.
The Bahramian family and other relatives of detainees were pressured to stay silent. Some shut down social media accounts out of fear.
Rights groups condemned today’s execution as part of a broader campaign of intimidation. The “No to Execution” campaign said the killing demonstrated the government’s reliance on fear, adding that only continued resistance could end what it called a cycle of death sentences targeting protesters.
In June, Iranian authorities executed Mojahed (Abbas) Kourkour, another protester detained during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, who was convicted of charges including "enmity against God" and "corruption on earth" following a deadly incident in the southwestern city of Izeh.
From July 23 to August 22, at least 160 people were executed in Iran, averaging one every five hours, according to a report by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which warned that the pace of executions in the country is accelerating.
Iran accounted for 64% of all known global executions in 2024, with at least 972 people executed, according to Amnesty International, in what the rights group says is the government's ongoing campaign of mass suppression of dissent.
“These devices should be used on thieves and fraudsters, not for a teacher who simply demanded her union rights,” says one teacher and union activist.
She recounts how, in the silence of the night, the short beep of her device awakens her five-year-old daughter—a constant reminder that miles away, someone is watching. Barred from stepping more than a kilometer from her home, she must wear the virtual shackle at all times.
She is one of dozens of teachers, artists, students, writers, members of religious minorities and labor activists who, after months or years in prison, now serve the remainder of their sentences under electronic surveillance.
Their names have been withheld due to the likelihood of official retaliation for telling their stories.
The devices are fastened to the leg and tracked around the clock by Iran’s Prisons Organization. In theory, they modernize punishments and reduce prison costs. In practice, they are applied not only to financial, drug or theft offenders but increasingly to civil and political activists.
Bruised—and paying for it
“I am having to pay just to have a shackle strapped to my leg,” one activist remarks.
For many, the devices are humiliating, painful, and financially crushing. Lawyers describe them as tools of harassment, combining physical restriction with constant control.
The locally manufactured monitors are poorly designed: heavy, sharp-edged and often causing wounds or inflammation.
To add insult to injury, users must pay for their shackle: an upfront fee of about $25 and roughly $9 a month thereafter—sums that weigh heavily on activists who are out of work or barred from working.
Restricted lives
“From the hairdresser to the grocery store, people call me a hero and say: ‘Respect for your courage.’ But I’m glad my mother isn’t alive to see me wearing this shackle,” says a female teacher."
The devices typically restrict movement to a 1,000-meter radius around the home, though the exact distance is determined by a judge. The impact is immediate: disrupted jobs, missed family events, lost opportunities and even obstacles to medical care.
Protest singer Vafa Ahmadpour, known online as Vafadar, announced that he lost the chance to travel to the US as an honorary judge at an arts festival because of his ankle monitor.
Some wearers try to hide the device under socks or trousers to avoid stares. Others leave it visible and say most reactions are sympathetic.
Arbitrary power
Some lawyers say monitors allow prisoners to return to a normal life, but others stress the selective and arbitrary way monitors are used against protesters.
“In other countries, these devices are used for actual financial or violent crimes; but in Iran, they’ve become tools for controlling and humiliating protesters and civil defenders and union activists,” says another.
He notes that law enforcement agencies wield wide discretion in deciding who qualifies and under what conditions—leaving activists especially vulnerable.
The stigma of ankle monitoring often blocks people from resuming their jobs. Some have even been forced to move homes so their workplace remains within the permitted radius.
“After my release, the school principal said I needed an official letter from the judge to return to teaching,” a teacher explains. “The judge confirmed I wasn’t legally banned from working, but the school still refused to take me back. I suspect the Intelligence Ministry put pressure on them.”
An invisible prison
Another teacher describes the constant anxiety: “Even going for a jog in the park makes me anxious. Once, I stepped outside the boundary. At 6:30 in the morning, they called and threatened to send me back to prison.”
It’s a recurring theme in conversations with those wearing monitors.
“I went out to buy a book I loved. At the intersection, the device beeped—I remembered I wasn’t allowed to cross. I looked at the book with longing and turned back,” says one author.
“The painful part is that only you can see this invisible boundary. Everyone else can cross it—except you.”
“In Shiraz Adelabad Prison, my cellmates were murderers and dangerous criminals. For me, the ankle monitor was a choice between bad and worse,” says a teacher from Shiraz.
For many, the device remains preferable to the harsh conditions of Iran’s prisons—but only barely.
“This is the least we pay for demanding our rights,” one teacher says.
“The ankle monitor has limited my physical movement, but it hasn’t stopped me from thinking and writing,” says another author. “I still write—and that’s something the government can never take away from me.”
