Hengaw, the Norway-based Kurdish human rights organisation, reported two executions in Iran on Saturday 2 May: Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour, both charged with spying for Israel1. Hengaw simultaneously revised April's monthly execution total upward to at least 26, including 14 political prisoners2. The previous topic figure was 22 political executions in the six weeks since 19 March; the April aggregate revises that count upward and tightens the window.
The 'spying for Israel' charge category links the executions directly to the war narrative. Iran's judiciary has been processing politically sensitive cases under that classification at speed since February 28. Bakrzadeh and Karimpour are the latest names attached to a category Hengaw has stopped publishing as a single rolling figure, because the monthly aggregate is now the only way the trajectory remains legible. The diplomatic track that might end the war-spy charge category is still stuck on sequencing.
The three Pakdasht mosque-fire defendants whose Supreme Court appeals were upheld on 27 April remain at imminent risk. Ehsan Hosseinipour Hesarloo, Matin Mohammadi and Erfan Amiri were aged 17 to 18 when arrested; their case files have moved to the implementation office, the administrative step before execution. Masoumeh Azhini, detained in early April, is still missing per Hengaw's 2 May report, with no information from authorities for a month.
Iran's judicial-execution rate during the 2026 conflict is outpacing diplomatic motion in either direction across both the war-spy and Pakdasht categories. The figures Hengaw publishes monthly arrive faster than the briefing cadence, and the next scheduled briefing (#87) will already be running behind a register that is still moving.
