Mehrab Abdollahzadeh, a 27-year-old Kurdish barber from Orumiyeh, was hanged at Urmia Central Prison on Sunday morning, 3 May 1. He had been arrested on 22 October 2022 during the Woman Life Freedom protests, the anti-government demonstrations triggered by Mahsa Amini's death in police custody, and sentenced to death by Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Orumiyeh on 19 September 2024 on a charge of killing a member of the Basij, the Iranian volunteer paramilitary. He denied the charge throughout, alleging his confession was coerced under torture, including threats to detain his girlfriend and family. His retrial application was denied by the same Branch One on review.
Solitary confinement on 28 April, transfer from Orumiyeh on 30 April, execution at first light on Sunday: five days from isolation to the noose. The Norway-based Kurdish rights monitor Hengaw, which has become the de facto international register of wartime political executions in Iran, recorded the same procedural shape across recent cases. The trial court takes the confession, the appeal court takes the confession, the Supreme Court takes the confession, and the implementation unit takes the prisoner. The court is not a check on the verdict; it is the route by which the verdict is delivered.
Abdollahzadeh's case sits inside a tightening cluster. Karate champion Sasan Azadvar was hanged at Dastgerd Prison on 30 April ; Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour followed on 2 May after Israel-espionage convictions documented by Hengaw . Three further death-row prisoners were transferred to unknown locations from Orumiyeh on 1 May, the standard precursor to execution under the wartime tempo. Hengaw's casework shows the institutional choice clearly: Tehran is prosecuting the war on two parallel fronts, against Israel and the United States in the strait, and against detained protesters in the courts. Implementation units continue to hang while Araghchi negotiates and the IRGC counts boats.
