Kouroush Keyvani, a dual Iranian-Swedish national, was hanged on 18 March on espionage charges 1. Iranian authorities have published no trial records, no evidence summary, and no details of legal representation. His execution came one day before three young men — Saleh Mohammadi, 19; Saeed Davoudi, 21; and Mehdi Ghasemi, age unpublished — were publicly hanged in Qom on charges connected to the January 2026 anti-government protests, in proceedings that lasted less than three weeks from arrest to death sentence.
The Swedish dimension carries specific bilateral weight. Sweden's 2022 conviction of Hamid Nouri under universal jurisdiction — for his role in Iran's 1988 mass execution of political prisoners — produced sustained Iranian hostility. Tehran has since detained multiple Swedish-linked nationals in what human rights organisations describe as hostage diplomacy. Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish disaster medicine researcher, was sentenced to death in 2017 on espionage charges Amnesty International has called fabricated. Iranian law does not recognise dual nationality, blocking consular access for foreign governments. With diplomatic channels between Tehran and European capitals now degraded by the war, the external pressure that might otherwise slow such cases is functionally absent.
Iran Human Rights warned that authorities are conducting executions "in the shadow of war," when oversight is weakest 2. President Pezeshkian apologised for the January 2026 security force crackdown — the same crackdown in which Amnesty International documented snipers on rooftops firing into crowds, deliberately targeting heads and torsos . Yet the judiciary, which answers to The Supreme Leader rather than the president, has accelerated death sentences from those very events. Dozens more prisoners with pending death sentences are at immediate risk, including minors 3. The pattern is well-established: during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, revolutionary courts fast-tracked at least four protest-related executions. During the Iran-Iraq War, the 1988 prison massacres killed thousands of political prisoners in a matter of weeks. Internal repression has historically intensified, not paused, when Iran faces external military pressure.
