Iranian authorities publicly executed two protesters on 29 July 2026, a week after executing at least three others. Amnesty International called on the authorities to halt what it described as an escalating campaign of arbitrary executions and death sentences targeting people who took part in protests.
The organisation said the executions represent a further escalation in the authorities’ use of the death penalty to crush dissent, and described the executions carried out the previous week as arbitrary.
The pipeline behind the two executions
Amnesty International warned that at least 60 other people remain at risk of execution after sentences were issued against them. Three of them were arrested when they were children.
That last point matters in law, not only in sympathy. The prohibition on executing people for acts they are alleged to have committed before the age of eighteen is set out in the international treaties on civil and political rights and on the rights of the child, and it admits no exception, including for offences a state classifies as its most serious.
Executions carried out in public
The two executions were carried out in public, rather than inside a prison as the overwhelming majority of executions are.
The figure of at least 60 people is not a closed one. Because the sentences concern prosecutions arising from participation in protests, the number of people facing imminent execution rises with each new sentence handed down in related cases.
Amnesty International’s call is for both halves of that process to stop: the carrying out of the sentences already issued, and the issuing of new death sentences in protest-related cases.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
