Iran has carried out at least 88 public executions between 2011 and 2023, according to a review published by the daily Shargh, which said the practice -- often witnessed by crowds including children -- has failed to reduce violent crime despite declining in recent years.
Hengaw said Javad Naeimi, a resident of Qom and a specialist working at the Natanz site, was hanged at dawn on October 18 in Qom Central Prison “under conditions of total secrecy.”
Iranian state media had earlier reported the execution of an unnamed man for espionage for Israel but did not identify him.
The rights group said Naeimi had been arrested by security forces in February 2024 and sentenced to death after what it described as an opaque judicial process.
It said he was subjected to torture and coerced confessions during interrogation, citing a pattern of forced admissions in Iranian espionage cases.
Iran’s judiciary has not commented publicly on the latest claims.
Earlier reports by the judiciary-linked Mizan news agency said the executed man had “admitted to communicating with Israeli intelligence for personal and professional reasons.”
Hengaw said Naeimi’s burial took place under heavy security at Qom’s Behesht-e Masoumeh cemetery on October 21, and that his family had been warned not to speak publicly about the case.
The execution comes amid an intensified crackdown on alleged Israeli-linked espionage cases following Israel’s June strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
In August, Tehran executed another scientist, Rouzbeh Vadi, for allegedly passing classified information to Mossad, while in September and October several other men were hanged on similar charges.
Last month, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran said the country had executed 11 individuals on espionage charges this year, with at least nine carried out after Israel's military strike on Iran on June 13. Saturday's execution brings the total to at least 12.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights, have condemned the surge in executions, saying trials for alleged espionage often fail to meet international standards of due process.
Tehran maintains that it is acting within its laws to counter what it calls “organized intelligence infiltration” targeting its nuclear and defense programs.
The 39-year-old Iranian political activist said he was tortured and nearly killed by other migrants after being recognized for wearing a T-shirt with the Israeli flag and advocating for a pro-Israel rally while living in refugee camp in Northern Greece.
“I curse myself a thousand times a day,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t run away and died right then and there so I wouldn’t have to endure all this pain now.”
Ramezanipour said the refugees, whose nationality he withheld to guard against reprisals, shot him in the leg and held him down as they dripped molten plastic on his stomach.
A mechanic by trade, he fled Iran in 2016 after years of activism alongside reformist figures such as Mohammad Nourizad and later volunteered for a Persian-language Israeli radio outlet in Turkey.
'Admirer of Israel'
Ramezanipour spoke to Iran International from hiding, saying he still fears his attackers could find him.
His ordeal, he said, began after he fled Turkey in 2023, where members of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves group which opposes migration had threatened him.
Transferred to the Kavala refugee camp in northern Greece, he said he saw anti-Israel slogans scrawled on the walls and campaigns in the city supporting Hamas for several months recently.
Ramezanipour said he has long admired the arch-foe of the Iranian theocratic rulers he had fled, saying many in the region had been "brainwashed" against Israel.
The devastating Israeli ground incursion into Gaza which local medics say killed over 67,000 people after Hamas attacks on Israel killed over 1,200 Israelis and captured over 200 others has stoked sharp criticism of Israel, especially in the Muslim world.
“I decided to get an Israeli flag and enter the camp with it,” he recalled. “At first no one bothered me, but when the camp director saw me, he ordered the security guards to take it away. I refused.”
The next day, he was summoned and forced to hand it over. “The director even threatened me, saying that either I would leave the camp or he would — that there wasn’t room for both of us,” he said.
Tens of thousands of asylum seekers languish in semi-lawless camps in and around Europe hoping to achieve safety and prosperity outside their homelands.
Western immigration authorities typically favor asylum applicants who are able to demonstrate they face plausible harm for their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, political views or activism.
Pro-Israel rally bid in Greek refugee camp
Iran International has reviewed the paperwork Ramezanipour filed to local Greek authorities requesting official permission to hold a public rally near the refugee camp in late July. The rally never materialized.
The network has also examined medical documents confirming that he sustained second- and third-degree burns with severe infection risk and signs of torture, as well as a Serbian police report showing that misdemeanor charges against him for illegal residency were dropped due to his cooperation with authorities and the circumstances of his case.
The documents did not elaborate on the alleged attack, perpetrators or potential motives.
Iran International has additionally seen photos and videos provided by Ramezanipour showing his current condition and the poor state of the camp where he is living.
As threats against him intensified inside the camp, Ramezanipour decided to leave. He said unknown men had begun following him after his failed attempt to organize the rally.
“One night around two in the morning, a car stopped in front of me,” he recalled about the early hours of September 28. “A man claimed to be a police officer and asked for my ID. Then someone shouted, ‘Don’t let this bastard escape—catch him!’”
Fearing for his life, he fled Greece with the help of smugglers and crossed into Serbia. “I thought I was finally safe,” he said. But in the Serbian border town of Loznica, he was taken to an abandoned factory filled with other migrants.
'The same bastard'
Inside, one of the men pulled out a phone, looked at a photo, then at him. “It was the picture of me wearing the Israeli flag T-shirt,” he said. “He compared it to my face and told the others, ‘This is the same bastard.’”
“They tied my hands behind my back and stuffed a cloth into my mouth,” he said. “They melted plastic and poured it on my body. They shot me in the thigh."
Ramezanipour eventually got help from local villagers who called the police.
“The police were kind” he said.
Ramezanipour said he identified four of the fifteen men who attacked him. Police told him the suspects had fled to Bosnia, but one officer later confided that Serbian and Bosnian police “don’t have good relations,” making arrests unlikely.
Mahshid Nazemi, an advocate with the refugee network Iran House, said Ramezanipour reached out to her through refugee contacts seeking help.
“Many of them find us when they have nowhere else to turn,” she said. “His wounds are infected and he’s in constant pain. He can’t walk without help, and he lives in fear they’ll find him again," Nazemi told Iran International.
She said his story is one of many that show the dangers refugees face in Europe. “Refugees are beaten, raped and pushed back across borders,” she said. “When they drown, Turkey blames Greece and Greece blames Turkey. No one takes responsibility.”
From his camp in Serbia, Ramezanipour says he still wakes at night, reliving the pain and fearing his attackers will find him again.
Shamkhani, a senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has recently come under public scrutiny in Iran after a leaked video showed his daughter’s lavish wedding featuring unveiled women, Western-style celebrations and his daughter the bride.
“You are the same person who, in January 1979 in Ahvaz, along with your accomplice Mohsen Rezaei, assassinated Malek Mohammad Boroujerdi, my father,” Boroujerdi wrote on Instagram on Monday, addressing Shamkhani.
Boroujerdi appeared on Iran International on Tuesday, elaborating on his accusations against senior Iranian officials, including Shamkhani and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Rezaei.
“The Mansouron Group, formed in 1975 by figures such as Mohsen Rezaei, Shamkhani and others created a terrorist cell that carried out assassinations in Khuzestan province, including my father’s killing in the city of Ahvaz,” Boroujerdi said.
Mansouroun was one of seven Islamist groups active before the 1979 revolution that later joined together to form the core of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The group, led by figures including Mohsen Rezai, united with six others — Towhidi Saf, Towhidi Badr, Falagh, Ommat-e Vahida, Saheban-e Safa, and Mo’tahedin-e Eslam — to establish the force that became the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“Ayatollah Khomeini had urged oil company employees to strike, aiming to cripple the Shah’s oil-dependent economy. My father opposed this strategy for toppling the Shah’s government," he added.
"As a member of oil company management, he and others were placed on an assassination list circulated in Ahvaz mosques and executed in January."
Mehrzad Boroujerdi is a professor of political science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology and the author of the book ‘Iranian Intellectuals and the West.’
Shamkhani, a former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and now a member of the Expediency Council, has long been a key figure in Iran’s security establishment. He also serves as the Supreme Leader’s representative on the National Defense Council.
He and his family have come under intense criticism by dissidents for their apparent wealth and influence as many Iranians struggle with costs of living wrought by corruption, mismanagement and sanctions from Western foes of Tehran's policies.
Hossein, his son, has been described in a series of reports by Bloomberg as a key overseer of Iran's efforts to circumvent sanctions, enriching himself in the process. Shamkhani the younger has insisted he is a legitimate businessman.
“Over the past 45 years, most senior military and security positions in the Islamic Republic have been held by members of the Mansouron Group including Shamkhani, Rezaei, and Gholam Ali Rashid (who was killed in an Israeli attack),” Boroujerdi said.
The Mansouron Group was an Iranian guerrilla organization active in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily in Khuzestan province, opposing the Pahlavi regime through armed struggle and political activism.
Formed around 1969, it later merged with other militant groups and played a role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Shargh described familiar scenes at public hangings: spectators arriving hours early, jostling for a view, with teenagers and children in tow as a crane and rope are readied.
The report cited legal experts and psychologists as saying that public hangings, though permitted under certain judicial conditions, risk normalizing violence and inflicting long-term psychological harm, particularly on young observers.
The practice declined to zero in 2021 before returning from 2022, with Fars, Khorasan and Kermanshah provinces accounting for the largest share, and smaller numbers in cities including Yasuj, Arak, Ahvaz, Marvdasht and Isfahan, the newspaper reported.
Many events occurred in provincial centers with large populations or cases that drew unusual media attention, the newspaper added.
“Public executions can have broad negative effects on society. They are not deterrents and instead strengthen violent behavior while harming the mental health of children and adolescents,” lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi told the daily.
Under Iran’s judicial principles, executions should ordinarily be conducted out of public view, Khorramshahi noted.
“Article 4 of the Islamic Penal Code allows a public execution only in specific circumstances, when the executing prosecutor proposes it and the prosecutor general approves.”
Repeated exposure to violence in public desensitizes society and fosters imitation, social psychiatrist Amirhossein Jalali Nadoushan told Shargh.
“When violence becomes a spectacle, it seeps into families and daily life,” Jalali said. Public executions can stir what he called “collective anger” -- repressed frustration that surfaces when citizens lack lawful ways to express grievances.
Deterrence needs equity, not spectacle
Severe penalties have not curbed crime despite heavy sentences for drug traffickers, murderers and thieves, jurist and former Central Bar Association chief Ali Najafi Tavana told the daily.
“No country has managed to control delinquency through executions or corporal punishment.”
Punishment, according to him, only works within a framework grounded in meeting basic needs -- work, housing, social security and psychological calm -- and in visible fairness. When poverty, corruption and discrimination persist and elites flaunt privilege, fear of punishment erodes, he added.
Shargh also cited two public executions in July and August -- one in Larestan and one in Golestan -- where onlookers applauded and whistled at the conclusion, stressing the paper’s finding that the display does not reduce violent crime.
Iran’s execution rate surges in 2025
Twenty-eight inmates were executed nationwide on October 22, bringing the total number of executions that month to 280, the Iran Human Rights Society wrote on Wednesday.
The group called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
Amnesty International on October 16 also urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.
“UN Member States must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands. More than 1,000 people have already been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025 -- an average of four a day,” Amnesty said.
