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Iran Conflict 2026
19APR

Hengaw: two hanged during ceasefire window

2 min read
11:05UTC

Hengaw documented that Mohammadamin Biglari, a 19-year-old computer-science student, and Shahin Vahedparast Kalour, 30, were hanged at dawn on 5 April at Ghezel Hesar Prison without a final family visit. The war execution tally is now at least 13.

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Key takeaway

Three political-prisoner executions inside the ceasefire window show Tehran is not treating the truce as a constraint on domestic repression.

Mohammadamin Biglari, a 19-year-old computer-science student, and Shahin Vahedparast Kalour, 30, were hanged at dawn on 5 April at Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj without a final family visit, after trials lasting under a month 1. Both were arrested on 8 January 2026. The documentation was filed by Hengaw, the Kurdish human rights monitoring organisation that has tracked this caseload through the war , and brings the Iranian political-prisoner execution tally since the war began to at least 13, three of them within four days during the declared ceasefire window.

The timing matters more than the total. A ceasefire declared on Truth Social on 8 April should, at a minimum, freeze the state's active measures against its own citizens for the period it is in force. Three executions inside that window, two of them attributed by Hengaw to Ghezel Hesar alone, establish that the Iranian judicial machinery is not treating the ceasefire as a constraint on domestic repression. It is operating at wartime tempo behind prison walls while the diplomatic text it is responding to does not formally exist.

Ghezel Hesar in Karaj has been the primary execution site tracked by Hengaw through this period, and the profile of the two men hanged on 5 April (young, civilian, trials shorter than four weeks, no family visit permitted) matches a documented pattern across the 13-case sample. The practical function of publishing the Hengaw filing around the two-week anniversary of the ceasefire is to make that pattern visible before the 22 April ceasefire window closes and any tally compiled during the window becomes the metric diplomats inherit.

For European governments weighing engagement, the documentation creates a specific record. A diplomatic off-ramp that ignores 13 documented executions inside a ceasefire is politically harder to sell to legislatures that monitor Iranian human rights reporting; one that conditions engagement on the executions stopping creates a new criterion Tehran has not been asked to meet.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran has been executing political prisoners throughout this war, and the pace has not slowed during the declared ceasefire. A human rights organisation called Hengaw, which monitors conditions inside Iranian prisons, has documented at least 13 executions of political prisoners since the war began in February. The two most recently documented cases are Mohammadamin Biglari, a 19-year-old university student studying computer science, and Shahin Vahedparast Kalour, aged 30. Both were arrested on the same day in January, both were hanged at dawn on 5 April at Ghezel Hesar Prison near Tehran, and neither was allowed a final visit with their family. Their trials lasted less than a month each. The timing matters. A ceasefire announced by the US president on social media on 8 April should pause hostilities against a country's own citizens as much as against foreign combatants. Three of the 13 documented executions occurred during the ceasefire window. The Iranian judicial system appears to be running at wartime speed behind prison walls regardless of what the ceasefire says.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Three documented executions inside the ceasefire window create a specific human-rights record that European governments conditioning engagement on Iranian domestic conduct will face in their own legislatures.

First Reported In

Update #68 · Sanctioned tankers slip the blockade

Hengaw· 14 Apr 2026
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Different Perspectives
Global South governments (Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa)
Global South governments (Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa)
Neutrality was possible when the targets were military. 148 dead schoolgirls made it impossible — no government can explain that away to its own citizens.
Iraqi government
Iraqi government
Iraq's force majeure is the position of a non-belligerent whose entire petroleum economy has been paralysed by a war between others — storage full, exports blocked, production being cut with no timeline for resumption.
Russia — Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia
Russia — Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia
Moscow calibrated its position between Gulf states and Iran: abstaining on Resolution 2817 rather than vetoing it, signalling it would not block protection for Gulf states, while refusing to endorse a text that ignores the US-Israeli campaign it regards as the conflict's proximate cause. Russia proposed its own ceasefire text — which failed 4-2-9 — allowing Moscow to claim the peacemaker role while providing Iran with satellite targeting intelligence, a duality consistent with its approach in Syria.
Gulf states
Gulf states
Absorbing daily Iranian strikes with no diplomatic channel to Tehran. UAE specifically threatened by Ghalibaf over potential Kharg Island staging.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
Riyadh restored the Saudi Petroline East-West pipeline to its seven million barrel per day capacity, providing Gulf exporters a bypass route around the Hormuz blockade. The move reduces Saudi exposure to the Hormuz closure without requiring Riyadh to take a public position on the blockade's legality.
Oil-importing nations (Japan, South Korea, India)
Oil-importing nations (Japan, South Korea, India)
The Hormuz closure is an existential threat. Japan, South Korea, and India receive the majority of their crude through the strait — they will bear the heaviest economic cost of a war they had no part in.