Iran said it executed six inmates on Saturday convicted of carrying out attacks in the country’s oil-rich south-west at the behest of Israel. They are the latest prisoners to be put to death in a wave of executions believed by human rights groups to be the largest in decades.
The executions follow the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June, which ended with Tehran vowing it would hit its enemies at home and abroad. However, campaigners say Iran often relies on coerced confessions and closed-door trials in its death penalty cases, particularly those involving espionage for Israel.
Iran said the men killed police officers and security forces and orchestrated bombings around Khorramshahr in Khuzestan province.
Iranian state television aired video of one of the condemned talking about the attacks, saying it was the first time the details were being made public.
A Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights reported the men's execution, identifying them all as “Arab political prisoners” detained during protests in 2019.
It said Iran had accused the men of having links to the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, which has launched attacks against oil pipelines in Iran's south-west in the past and other attacks.
“The six men were subjected to severe torture and coerced into giving televised ‘confessions’ under duress,” Hengaw said.
The Arab population of Khuzestan has long complained of discrimination by Iran’s central government, and insurgent groups have attacked oil pipelines there as part of an insurgency. The region also has been upset like other parts of Iran by waves of nationwide protests in recent years.
Iran put to a seventh inmate to death on Saturday for killing a Sunni cleric in 2009 in Kurdistan province, among other crimes.
In response to those protests and the June war, Iran has been putting prisoners to death at a pace unseen since 1988, when it executed thousands at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights and the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran put the number of people executed in 2025 at more than 1,000, noting the figure could be higher as Iran does not report on each execution.
Independent human rights experts at the UN have also criticised Iran’s executions.
