Hengaw, a Kurdish-Iranian human rights monitor based in Norway, documented a hunger strike across 56 Iranian prisons on 5 May, the 119th week of its "No to Executions Tuesdays" campaign1. The same documentation recorded the executions of Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour on charges of "spying for Israel". Iran HRM, a separate monitor, has counted at least 26 political executions since 19 March, the campaign's accelerating tail.
"No to Executions Tuesdays" began as a weekly co-ordinated prisoner protest inside Tehran's Evin Prison in late 2023 and has spread across Iran's penal system over the 119 weeks since. Participation tracks repression: prisons join when the execution rate climbs, drop out when guards crack down on individual blocks. Hengaw's count of 56 is the highest single-week tally documented in the strike's run, exceeding the previous peak set during the Mahsa Amini protest cycle.
Iran's revolutionary courts have escalated through the espionage charge. Bakrzadeh and Karimpour were tried on "spying for Israel" indictments, the legal frame Iran's judiciary has used to convert long-standing political detainees into wartime cases since the 19 March escalation. Iran HRM's 26-execution count includes Kurdish prisoners, Baha'i community members, and detainees originally charged with non-political offences whose cases were reclassified after the war began. The pattern is documented enough that Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran have raised it in standing reports.
The 5 May data point stands apart for its scale. A 56-prison strike requires co-ordination that Iran's intelligence services would normally interrupt. That it landed at all suggests prisoner solidarity now runs across regional, ethnic and confessional lines that the Iranian state has historically been able to exploit. Hengaw's documentation depends on family contacts and former prisoners; figures it publishes are typically conservative because unverifiable cases are excluded.
The MOU's seven enumerated points include no clause on detainees, executions, or political prisoners. The text now in Abbas Araghchi's ministry covers enrichment, HEU transfer, sanctions, frozen funds, Hormuz, the Lebanon ceasefire and the negotiation window; the humanitarian track stays where it is whether or not the MOU is signed. Iran HRM's 26-since-19-March figure will keep climbing in the background of every diplomatic calendar event between now and a written agreement.
