Hengaw, the Norway-based Kurdish human rights organisation that monitors custodial executions and custodial deaths inside Iran, documented two further executions at Ghezel Hesar prison during the ceasefire window, and confirmed the death of Abbas Yavari, aged 31, under torture at a detention centre in Shiraz1. Iranian authorities declared Yavari's death a suicide.
Ghezel Hesar is a high-security prison in Karaj where Hengaw has previously documented multiple political executions during the 2026 conflict. Two further executions there (Biglari and Kalour) were recorded on 14 April. The 18 April additions extend Hengaw's running toll during the ceasefire window rather than before or after it. Executions during an active pause in hostilities are data points the Iranian government had hoped to obscure under the blackout; Hengaw's documentation chain has continued to produce names.
Yavari's case is separately notable because it places a named, aged individual at a specific detention centre in Shiraz and contests the Iranian government's suicide ruling with an independent assessment of torture. Custodial deaths ruled suicide by the state are the category in which Iranian rights monitors most frequently identify extra-judicial killings; Hengaw's willingness to name one at 31, and to tie it to a location, gives international observers a documentary anchor.
Behind these cases, Hengaw's wider wartime count sharpens the frame. Hengaw had already documented 125,630 damaged structures and 960 people rescued from rubble by 13 April. The Ghezel Hesar and Shiraz reports add named custodial victims to a toll that has so far been measured mainly in building counts.
