Victims recount Iran's use of mock executions as torture

While Iran is notorious for its high execution rate, a frequently overlooked aspect is the harrowing accounts of "mock executions" used as a method of torture against prisoners, including minors.

This report highlights several cases, shedding light on the brutal reality faced by those caught in the grip of Iran's repressive tactics. The accounts reveal a systematic practice aimed at extracting forced confessions and instilling terror among detainees.

Victims, including political prisoners and protesters, recount harrowing experiences of being taken to the gallows, subjected to simulated shootings, or blindfolded with the belief they would be hanged, enduring profound psychological and physical torment.

In 2018, Abolfazl Chezani Sharahi, a juvenile offender charged with murder at the age of 14, was subjected to solitary confinement and endured the psychological torment of mock executions on four separate occasions. Ultimately, at the age of 19, he faced execution.

Iran remains one of the few countries that administer the death penalty for crimes committed during adolescence.

This is while updates to the country's Islamic Penal Code in 2013 allow judges to consider the mental capacity and maturity of young offenders when they are tried for crimes that warrant capital punishment for adults. Furthermore, in 2014, Iran’s Supreme Court ruled that all juvenile offenders on death row could apply for a retrial.

Additionally, Iran ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child decades ago, which explicitly bans the execution of juvenile offenders.

Yalda Dehghani, a 25-year-old activist, was arrested in 2023 and subjected to mock executions with a handgun twice within an hour at the Rasht Intelligence Office in northern Iran.

This former political prisoner recounted to Iran International, "At the Intelligence Office, a sergeant grabbed me by my hair and dragged me across the floor to a small courtyard. He held me against the wall, turned on his phone's flashlight, pointed it at me, and said, 'I want to film you and hand over your body to your family. Say anything you think will ease their pain.' When I heard the gunshot, my face was against the wall, and I felt the blood spreading from the point of the bullet's impact on my body. I thought, my body is warm now, and it might take a few minutes for the pain to register."

She said it took her more than a minute to realize that the handgun was not loaded.

According to this former political prisoner, two hours later, they took her back to the small courtyard and threatened to kill her if she did not confess against herself and her friends.

Dehghani noted that it was close to dawn, and the officers were waiting for the call to prayer to finish so they could carry out her execution. She said, "This time, they placed the gun above my head, pressed it, and threatened me. With each press, I fell to the ground. I thought to myself, this time, they are waiting for the call to prayer; they will surely kill me. Suddenly, I heard the sound of the magazine. This time, I fell unconscious to the ground. I thought I was dead, but a few minutes later, I regained consciousness in the detention center."

Dehghani told Iran International that she was sexually assaulted several times by a sergeant in the Rasht police detention center.

Ashkan Soleimani, a former political prisoner who was arrested during the 2022 protests, was subjected to mock executions by the authorities twice. Once with a handgun in the courtyard of the Rasht Intelligence Office and another time with a noose in Lakan Prison in the same city.

In an interview with Iran International, Soleimani recounted the night he was subjected to a mock execution with a handgun: "The commander of the forces that arrested me placed the muzzle of the handgun on my body and said, 'We will execute you here, and no one will know.'"

Soleimani mentioned that upon entering the political prisoners' ward in Lakan Prison, he heard numerous accounts from inmates about mock executions with a handgun. He told Iran International, "Prisoners were coerced into making forced confessions against themselves and their associates on the very first night of their arrest using this method."

One week before his mock execution with a noose, this political prisoner was transferred to solitary confinement in Lakan Prison.

He said, "On Saturday, they took me to solitary confinement and told me I would be executed on Thursday. I did everything I could to end my life. I even tried to cut my throat with the pen they had given me to write my will."

Soleimani recounted that on the night before his mock execution, a cleric was sent to his cell to read the Quran and talk about the afterlife.

He said, "They removed the blindfold, and someone started reciting the Quran. Suddenly, they placed the noose around my neck. Two people, one on my left and one on my right, shook the stool for 15 to 20 seconds. After a sudden jolt, they lifted my feet off the ground and said, 'The execution has been postponed.'"

Khaled Pirzadeh, a former bodybuilding champion and political prisoner arrested for his activism, told London’s Kayhan in January 2024 while he was on medical leave that he had been taken to the gallows twice, experiencing what he described as "terror sentences."“They put the noose around my neck twice. The terror of the death sentence. They did not show me any mercy out of their spite and tortured me to the brink of death. They would place my hands between the interrogation room's metal door and slam it shut,” Pirzadeh described his tortures.

Saman Seydi, a 26-year-old Iranian rap artist known as Saman Yasin, who was arrested during the anti-establishment protests in October 2022 and sentenced to death, endured the psychological torment of mock executions on two separate occasions.

Saman Seydi, better known as Saman Yasin

Ahmad Haeri, a political prisoner and Yasin’s cellmate, recounted Yasin’s harrowing experiences in a letter from prison obtained by Iran International. Haeri quoted Yasin’s chilling words about the mock executions:

"I felt the burning of the rope around my neck. The blood that seemed frozen in my body suddenly boiled, and I shouted and cursed at them, 'End it quickly...'"

"I was waiting every moment for the ground to give way beneath me and, thanks to the tied rope, for my neck to break and it all to end."

After learning that his execution was postponed, Yasin said, "It felt as if my legs had been cut off and I had been thrown to the ground."

Another account pertains to Iranian Kurdish political prisoner Pakhshan Azizi, whose recently announced death sentence has garnered significant attention.

The Hengaw Human Rights Organization, a Kurdish advocacy group, reported that Azizi published a letter detailing her repeated torture and mock hangings during detention.

"The interrogators have repeatedly hung me." She emphasized in the letter, "We may be insignificant to the central authority, but we receive the heaviest and most severe sentences."

The father of jailed Iranian protester Sahand Noor Mohammadzadeh, who was arrested outside his home in Tehran during the protests in October 2022 and subsequently sentenced to death two months later for allegedly attempting to break a highway guardrail and setting fire to a dustbin, disclosed that his son endured three mock executions.

A source close to Mohsen Ghiasi, who was arrested during the 2019 protests in Iran, told Iran Interntioainl about his mock executions.“Mohsen endured severe beatings and was instructed to write his will.” The source continued, “In the prison yard, a noose was placed around his neck. In his final moments, with his entire body trembling, he declared, ‘End it quickly.’ As Mohsen closed his eyes and awaited his death, he was informed that his execution had been postponed”.

Amnesty International reported in April that 853 people were executed in Iran in 2023, marking a record number in the past eight years. The organization highlighted that the government employs executions as a tool of political repression and warned that thousands more may face the same fate if the international community fails to intervene. According to the rights group Hengaw, at least 266 prisoners were executed across Iran in the first half of 2024, as the country's execution spree persists.