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Russia-Ukraine War 2026
5MAR

Two Kurds hanged on the talks day

2 min read
04:57UTC

Iran hanged Kurdish prisoners Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia at dawn on 1 June at Ghezel Hesar prison; co-defendant Arman Marefati, 38, faces imminent execution.

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Key takeaway

Iran hanged two Kurdish protesters at dawn on the same day its diplomats reshaped the war.

Prison authorities hanged two Kurdish prisoners, Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia, at dawn on Monday 1 June inside Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, the same day Iran suspended talks with Washington⁠1. Both were arrested during the January 2026 protests and sentenced on moharebeh charges, an Iranian capital offence meaning "waging war against God". Families were denied a final visit and the bodies were withheld. Their co-defendant Arman Marefati, 38, from Saqqez, remains at imminent risk in the Great Tehran Penitentiary.

The Hengaw rights monitor, a Norway-based Kurdish group, counts at least 36 politically motivated executions since the war began on 28 February, with 78 dissidents on death row⁠2. The moharebeh charge requires no proven act of violence, only a court finding of waging war against God, which is why protest arrests convert to death sentences so quickly.

Iran's Revolutionary Courts answer to the judiciary chief, not the negotiators, so the gallows tempo runs uncorrelated with the diplomatic calendar by design. The phone call that halted Beirut reached Jerusalem in minutes; it never reached a cell in Karaj.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Moharebeh is a charge used in Iran's Islamic law system meaning 'waging war against God'. It carries the death penalty and has been applied to protest participants, particularly from ethnic minority communities like Kurds. Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia were arrested during protests in January 2026, convicted on this charge, and hanged at Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, a city west of Tehran that houses one of Iran's largest prison complexes. Hengaw is a Norwegian-registered organisation staffed by Kurds monitoring human rights conditions inside Iran. It is the principal independent source for documenting wartime executions; Iran's government does not publish this information. The 36 executions Hengaw has tallied since 28 February include protesters, political dissidents, and people convicted of working with foreign intelligence services. Arman Marefati, the third man convicted in the same case as Maleki and Mohammadinia, has been moved to the Great Tehran Penitentiary. Transfers to that facility typically precede imminent execution in Hengaw's documented cases.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The moharebeh charge applied to Kurdish protest participants is not a wartime improvisation: it draws on a Revolutionary Court precedent established during the 1979-80 Kurdish insurgency, when the charge was first used against Sunni Kurdish fighters opposing the new Islamic Republic.

The IRGC's security courts have jurisdiction over cases categorised as national security threats, which means ordinary criminal-procedure protections such as open hearings, right of appeal and independent defence counsel are procedurally excluded.

The wartime acceleration in executions serves a secondary function the Hengaw data reflects: with the internet blackout limiting organised protest, the security system is eliminating the core of the January 2026 activist networks before any ceasefire or reconstruction phase creates space for renewed civil society organising. At 78 people on death row from the January protests alone, the pipeline is calibrated to outlast the ceasefire talks.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    Arman Marefati's transfer to the Great Tehran Penitentiary places him within the documented high-risk execution pipeline. International pressure from the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran is the only near-term mechanism that has produced delays in individual cases; no formal government has intervened.

  • Consequence

    Any ceasefire or normalisation process that does not include a prisoners-and-executions clause will produce an Iran that exits the war with a decimated Kurdish political activist base and no accountability mechanism for wartime judicial killings.

Sources:ABC News
Mentions:Iran →Qezel Hesar Prison →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Mahsa Amini protests →Karaj →Iraq →Beirut →Iran-Iraq War →Tehran →Mahsa Amini →Norway →Great Tehran Penitentiary →Washington →Hengaw →Revolutionary Court →
First Reported In

Update #115 · Iran moves first, Trump moves by phone

ABC News· 2 Jun 2026
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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.