Iran executed more than 1,000 people this year, the highest number in nearly two decades, NGO says

At least 64 hanged in the past week as part of 'mass killing campaign'

Human rights campaigners say Iran has carried out its highest number of executions in 30 years this year, and criticise legal procedure and standards of evidence. Reuter

Iran has executed at least 1,000 people in 2025, the highest figure in about 20 years, an NGO said on Tuesday, criticising the “mass killing campaign” in prisons as a crime against humanity.

At least 64 people were hanged in the past week alone, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group, which counts and verifies executions in Iran on a daily basis.

With more than three months of 2025 to go, the figure is already the highest since IHR began keeping records in 2008, topping the 975 recorded last year.

Iran carried out a wave of executions in the 1980s and early 1990s in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war, but campaigners say it is now using capital punishment more frequently than at any time in the past decades.

“In recent months, the Islamic republic has begun a mass killing campaign in Iran's prisons, the dimensions of which- in the absence of serious international reactions – are expanding every day,” said IHR director Mahmood Moghaddam.

Mr Moghaddam said the executions “amount to crimes against humanity and must be placed at the top of the international community's agenda”.

Raphael Hazan, director of Paris-based campaign group Together Against the Death Penalty, said the figures confirmed his group's verdict that Iran's use of the death penalty can be classified as “a crime against humanity”.

“The international community must consider that Iran as a state commits a crime against humanity in the mass and systematic use of the death penalty,” he told AFP.

Iran has executed 10 people this year who were convicted of spying for Israel, according to IHR, the majority after the conflict with Israel began.

The latest alleged spy to be hanged was Babak Shahbazi, who was executed on September 17 after what Amnesty International described as a “grossly unfair trial in which the authorities never investigated his torture”.

IHR claims its figures for executions are “an absolute minimum”, with the number likely to be higher “due to the lack of transparency and restrictions on reporting”.

Executions in Iran are exclusively by hanging, although other methods have been used in the past. Most take place inside prison walls, although there are occasional public hangings.

Iran last month explained its use of the death penalty, saying it applied only to the most serious offences. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Tehran was “striving to limit the use of this punishment to only the most severe crimes”.

IHR said most hangings were for non-lethal offences, with 50 per cent of executions for drugs-related cases.

Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told AFP that it had “repeatedly stressed” that drug offences “must not be punishable by death”.

Out of IHR's toll for 2025, 28 of those hanged were women.

Amnesty said this week that executions in Iran had reached “horrific proportions” and “scores of people” were at risk of hanging in Iran after “unfair trials and convictions on politically motivated charges”.