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Iran Conflict 2026
19APR

Two Kurds hanged on the talks day

2 min read
11:05UTC

Iran hanged Kurdish prisoners Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia at dawn on 1 June at Ghezel Hesar prison; co-defendant Arman Marefati, 38, faces imminent execution.

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Key takeaway

Iran hanged two Kurdish protesters at dawn on the same day its diplomats reshaped the war.

Prison authorities hanged two Kurdish prisoners, Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia, at dawn on Monday 1 June inside Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, the same day Iran suspended talks with Washington 1. Both were arrested during the January 2026 protests and sentenced on moharebeh charges, an Iranian capital offence meaning "waging war against God". Families were denied a final visit and the bodies were withheld. Their co-defendant Arman Marefati, 38, from Saqqez, remains at imminent risk in the Great Tehran Penitentiary.

The Hengaw rights monitor, a Norway-based Kurdish group, counts at least 36 politically motivated executions since the war began on 28 February, with 78 dissidents on death row 2. The moharebeh charge requires no proven act of violence, only a court finding of waging war against God, which is why protest arrests convert to death sentences so quickly.

Iran's Revolutionary Courts answer to the judiciary chief, not the negotiators, so the gallows tempo runs uncorrelated with the diplomatic calendar by design . The phone call that halted Beirut reached Jerusalem in minutes; it never reached a cell in Karaj.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Moharebeh is a charge used in Iran's Islamic law system meaning 'waging war against God'. It carries the death penalty and has been applied to protest participants, particularly from ethnic minority communities like Kurds. Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia were arrested during protests in January 2026, convicted on this charge, and hanged at Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, a city west of Tehran that houses one of Iran's largest prison complexes. Hengaw is a Norwegian-registered organisation staffed by Kurds monitoring human rights conditions inside Iran. It is the principal independent source for documenting wartime executions; Iran's government does not publish this information. The 36 executions Hengaw has tallied since 28 February include protesters, political dissidents, and people convicted of working with foreign intelligence services. Arman Marefati, the third man convicted in the same case as Maleki and Mohammadinia, has been moved to the Great Tehran Penitentiary. Transfers to that facility typically precede imminent execution in Hengaw's documented cases.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The moharebeh charge applied to Kurdish protest participants is not a wartime improvisation: it draws on a Revolutionary Court precedent established during the 1979-80 Kurdish insurgency, when the charge was first used against Sunni Kurdish fighters opposing the new Islamic Republic.

The IRGC's security courts have jurisdiction over cases categorised as national security threats, which means ordinary criminal-procedure protections such as open hearings, right of appeal and independent defence counsel are procedurally excluded.

The wartime acceleration in executions serves a secondary function the Hengaw data reflects: with the internet blackout limiting organised protest, the security system is eliminating the core of the January 2026 activist networks before any ceasefire or reconstruction phase creates space for renewed civil society organising. At 78 people on death row from the January protests alone, the pipeline is calibrated to outlast the ceasefire talks.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    Arman Marefati's transfer to the Great Tehran Penitentiary places him within the documented high-risk execution pipeline. International pressure from the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran is the only near-term mechanism that has produced delays in individual cases; no formal government has intervened.

  • Consequence

    Any ceasefire or normalisation process that does not include a prisoners-and-executions clause will produce an Iran that exits the war with a decimated Kurdish political activist base and no accountability mechanism for wartime judicial killings.

Sources:ABC News
Mentions:Iran →Qezel Hesar Prison →Hengaw →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Mahsa Amini protests →Karaj →Iraq →Beirut →Iran-Iraq War →Tehran →Mahsa Amini →Norway →Great Tehran Penitentiary →Washington →
First Reported In

Update #115 · Iran moves first, Trump moves by phone

ABC News· 2 Jun 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
Athlete Benyamin Naqdi sentenced to death
The 30 May death sentence for Benyamin Naqdi set the ongoing wartime execution pace that produced the 1 June Ghezel Hesar executions.
Occurred 30 May 2026
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Iran's killing moves to the field
The extrajudicial killing of Kurdish activists Meysam and Mojtaba Veisi near Dalahu on 28 May preceded and contextualises the 1 June Kurdish executions at Ghezel Hesar.
Occurred 28 May 2026
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This Event
Two Kurds hanged on the talks day
Iran's courts ran at wartime tempo on the same day its diplomats reshaped the war by phone, showing the security state moves independently of the negotiating calendar.
Different Perspectives
Israel
Israel
IDF Chief Eyal Zamir declared on 3 June there was no ceasefire for his forces, and strikes killed at least 10 civilians and one Israeli soldier on 4 June. The IDF killed Hezbollah's chief engineer and warned three south Lebanon villages to evacuate on 5 June, advancing into ground the unsigned Washington framework has not caught.
Hezbollah / Lebanon
Hezbollah / Lebanon
Naim Qassem rejected the Washington Lebanon framework on 4 June as "absurd, humiliating and insulting", blocking a ceasefire instrument that required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani before any Israeli withdrawal. Over one million Lebanese remain displaced; the framework's collapse prolongs that toll.
Iran
Iran
Foreign Minister Araghchi publicly coupled the Lebanon ceasefire to the Iran-US nuclear track on 4 June, carrying IRGC authority rather than his own civilian mandate. The IRGC delegation has sent no HEU counter-proposal since Araghchi confirmed no progress that same day; Mojtaba Khamenei's 21 May order to keep the 440.9 kg stockpile inside Iran remains operative.
United States
United States
Rubio placed the Iran-US deal at 95 per cent complete on 4 June while the administration signed no Iran instrument and OFAC designated only Cuban targets. Trump separately disclosed and rejected an airlift plan to collect Iran's HEU stockpile, claiming the material is "entombed", a claim the IAEA cannot verify.
China
China
Beijing's MOFCOM Blocking Rules constrain OFAC enforcement on the mainland; China has not corroborated Trump's verbal account of any bilateral summit, and the rial's failure to hold its Rubio bounce, combined with the IRGC's stablecoin rail closure, increases Chinese yuan-denominated oil-payment exposure through Hormuz.
Bahrain
Bahrain
The IRGC struck Bahrain on 3 June as its sirens sounded and its PAC-3 magazine neared exhaustion; excluded from Rubio's 2 May emergency resupply, Bahrain received a 50-round Federal Register notice on 1 June on an 18-month delivery timeline, meaning it is defending the US Fifth Fleet headquarters on the last rounds it has.