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Iran Conflict 2026
26APR

Yazd execution; three Ali Fahim defendants in solitary

3 min read
13:59UTC

Hengaw confirmed Iran executed Jafar Fakhrabadi at Yazd Central Prison on Monday morning. Shahab Zahdi, Abolfazl Salehi Siavoshani and Yaser Rajaeifar are alive in solitary at Ghezel Hesar with imminent execution risk.

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Key takeaway

Yazd execution and three Ali Fahim defendants in solitary show Iran's domestic enforcement is not pausing for diplomacy.

Hengaw, the Norway-based Kurdish human rights monitor, confirmed in its Monday daily report that Jafar Fakhrabadi was executed at Yazd Central Prison that morning 1. The agency had not yet published Fakhrabadi's age, charges or political classification by close of business Tuesday. Yazd Central Prison in central Iran handles a high share of moharebeh (waging war against God) cases under the Islamic Revolutionary Court structure that processes political defendants outside the ordinary criminal system. Hengaw tracks every Yazd execution because the prison is one of the busiest political-execution sites outside Tehran province.

The execution would, if classified as political, push the wartime execution count above the seventeen logged on 24 April . Erfan Kiani, executed at Ghezel Hesar Prison outside Karaj on 25 April on moharebeh charges, was the eighth wartime political prisoner Hengaw has documented . Ali Fahim, the lead defendant in a separate case, was executed at the same prison on 6 April; Hengaw confirmed that execution on 20 April. Three of Fahim's co-defendants, Shahab Zahdi, Abolfazl Salehi Siavoshani and Yaser Rajaeifar, are alive in solitary confinement at Ghezel Hesar with imminent execution risk per the agency's monitoring.

Hengaw has documented detainees from the late-2022 protest movement against the death of Mahsa Amini processed through cycles of solitary confinement and execution at the same prison, on the same charge, by the same Islamic Revolutionary Court structure, every few days. Two executions in nineteen days from a single prison have happened despite a ceasefire framework in force on the international front. Iran's diplomatic offer abroad runs in parallel to executions documented at home; the two tracks have not been linked at any point in the war.

The Islamic Republic has historically used wartime as cover for accelerated executions, most notably during the 1988 mass killings under Ayatollah Khomeini at the close of the Iran-Iraq war. The current cadence is slower than 1988 but is institutionally identical: a class of political prisoners processed through a single prison's intake-to-execution pipeline while foreign attention is fixed on the war front. Three named men alive at Ghezel Hesar on Tuesday are the next test of whether the cadence holds across the Friday WPR deadline.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran hanged another person at a prison in Yazd on Monday morning. His name is Jafar Fakhrabadi and the reasons for his execution have not been published. Separately, three other men connected to an earlier execution case are in solitary confinement at a different prison and face the same outcome. Iran is running domestic executions at a regular pace while its diplomats travel the world trying to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Ghezel Hesar's role as the primary disposal facility for protest-era detainees is structural, not incidental. The moharebeh (waging war against God) charge allows the Revolutionary Court to bypass standard evidentiary requirements and sentence defendants to death without appeal to ordinary courts.

The charge's breadth , covering any act deemed to threaten the Islamic state's existence , expanded during the 2022 protest cycle to cover protest-related social media posts and financial support for protest networks.

The wartime context adds a second structural driver: domestic opposition during a declared conflict is categorised as enemy collaboration, which raises the threshold from moharebeh to a combined charge including foreign-agent activity. The Fakhrabadi case has not yet received a published charge, but Yazd Central Prison processes a high proportion of moharebeh cases in central Iran.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    If Fakhrabadi's charges are political when Hengaw publishes them, the wartime political execution count documented since 28 February rises above 17, the figure logged on 24 April (ID:2751).

  • Risk

    The three Ali Fahim co-defendants at Ghezel Hesar face a documented institutional pattern in which co-defendants are executed within 30 days of the lead defendant; Erfan Kiani's 25 April execution suggests the secondary wave is already under way.

First Reported In

Update #82 · Iran writes Phase 1; Washington still has no pen

Hengaw Organization for Human Rights· 28 Apr 2026
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