The Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights reported on 24 April that three defendants in the Ali Fahim case, Shahab Zahdi, Abolfazl Salehi Siavoshani and Yaser Rajaeifar, remain in solitary confinement at Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj facing imminent execution1. Hengaw is the Kurdish rights monitor that documents executions and political detentions across Iran. No new executions were confirmed on Friday itself.
Hengaw counts 17 political prisoners executed since 28 February, the date of the first US strikes, and a Q1 2026 total exceeding 160 executions across all categories. The Ali Fahim case has been the principal marker: Fahim was executed earlier in the war, and Amirali Mirjafari followed on Day 53. The three remaining co-defendants in the same case now sit at the same pre-execution stage of the judicial sequence.
The post-28 February pace runs at roughly one political prisoner every three days, against a Q1 2026 non-political baseline that already made Iran the second-highest executioner in the world. Wartime pace sits inside that baseline rather than above it, which indicates the state is using existing administrative capacity to clear dissent cases under war cover rather than authorising a new volume of executions. The Ghezel Hesar clustering matters because solitary confinement at that specific facility has been the procedural precursor to execution for the Fahim-case defendants already killed.
The international visibility hinge is whether European capitals meeting at Cyprus on Friday raise the Hengaw tally in the summit conclusions. Hengaw's numbers are the single consistent measure that does not depend on Iranian state cooperation, and the 17-count since 28 February is the cleanest data point any European government can cite without contesting Tehran's internal judicial claims.
