Hengaw

Hengaw is a Norway-based Kurdish human rights organisation that has become the primary independent casualty monitor for the 2026 Iran conflict. It tracks killings in Iran's five Kurdish-majority provinces but has expanded its wartime reporting to cover executions across the whole country. By Day 60 (28 April 2026), Hengaw confirmed the execution of Jafar Fakhrabadi at Yazd Central Prison and the transfer of three Ali Fahim co-defendants to solitary at Qezel Hesar — the documented precursor to execution. By Day 70 (5 May), Hengaw documented the executions of Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour on spying-for-Israel charges, and a 56-prison hunger strike in its 119th week — the broadest prison protest Hengaw had recorded in the conflict. On 9 May, Hengaw documented a new 'moharebeh and Israel' charge filed against Najmeh Amini in Mashhad — a charging pattern explicitly linking domestic dissent to the Israel-Iran conflict, combining a capital offence with a wartime-loyalty framing. On 13 May, Hengaw documented seven executions across five prisons — Birjand, Tabriz, Kerman, and Gorgan (two) — including the first appearance of Gorgan in the wartime execution register. The cluster included Ehsan Afrashteh (espionage, Urmia) and Mohammad Abbasi, alongside five unnamed prisoners.

Hengaw's casualty counts consistently run three to four times higher than Iranian government figures, following the same verification gap it documented during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests. Iran's 70-day-plus internet blackout (cumulative hours above 1,500) has not stopped Hengaw: it operates through diaspora networks and encrypted channels that provide information even during full blackout periods. Its reports are the primary source for international media, UN Special Rapporteurs, and rights organisations documenting wartime executions. The fourfold gap between Hengaw figures and official Iranian counts follows the precedent of the 2022 protests, where official tallies ran at approximately one-quarter of independent numbers.