At least 30 individuals, including children, are at risk of the death penalty after their alleged offences linked to the recent protests in Iran. We must take urgent action and call for an immediate withdrawal of convictions and death sentences.
On 28 December 2025, protests erupted in Iran, with people across the country demanding fundamental change and a political system that respects human rights and dignity, following decades of repression.
At least 30 individuals are now facing the death penalty in relation to alleged offences committed in the context of the protests. At least eight of these people were sentenced to death in February within weeks of their arrest, while others are being tried in fast-tracked proceedings that fall short of international fair trial standards.
Some of those facing capital charges were children at the time of the alleged offences. Under international law, they must be excluded from the death penalty.
Those detained have already been subjected to enforced disappearance, incommunicado detention, torture, and other ill-treatment to extract forced “confessions”. Research also indicates that authorities have denied detainees access to lawyers, intimidated families into silence, and broadcast coerced confessions on state media, violating the presumption of innocence.
Iranian authorities are once again laying bare the depth of their disregard for the right to life and justice. This must not continue.
We call on the authorities to immediately halt all executions, quash death sentences, and ensure that all individuals are tried in accordance with international human rights standards. People detained solely for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and expression must be released immediately.
Authorities must also investigate allegations of torture, disclose the fate and whereabouts of those forcibly disappeared, guarantee access to legal counsel and medical care, and allow independent international monitors to observe detention facilities and trial proceedings.
The international community must take global action, pressuring the Iranian authorities to stop using the court system as a conveyor belt for executions.
