Niki Nikbakht comes from a close-knit family. She fondly flicks through photos of her two elder brothers, Hadi and Fazlollah, at her home in Osnabrück, northwest Germany.
In one photo, Hadi grins back at her as he embraces his two sons. He also has a 5-month-old daughter who’s never met her father. He’s been imprisoned since before she was born, sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“I keep thinking, what if it really happens? What if I never get to see my two brothers again?” says Nikbakht, fighting back tears. “But then I tell myself, ‘Niki, you have to keep going. Keep fighting. Stay strong. Don’t let this break you.’”
Hadi, 45, and Fazlollah, 50, are just two out of dozens of Iranian political prisoners facing execution in Iran right now. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR), a non-governmental organization with members inside and outside Iran, has been documenting cases like theirs and believes the regime has ramped up executions under the cover of conflict.
On Wednesday, IHR decried the execution of Mohammad Amini Dehaghani, arrested for taking part in January protests and sentenced to death following what the rights group believes to have been “an unfair trial.” So far this year, the regime has executed at least 47 political prisoners, a massive increase from 16 around the same time last year. CNN has reached out to Iran for comment.
When widespread protests began across Iran at the end of last year, US President Donald Trump warned the leadership in Tehran against a violent crackdown on demonstrators, saying America would “come to their rescue.”
The Iranian regime doubled down, employing lethal force to disperse demonstrators. The number killed is contested but the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) says it has confirmed the deaths of more than 6,000 protesters, with an additional 17,000 deaths under investigation. The Iranian government has acknowledged more than 3,000 deaths, but blamed most of the killings on “rioters” who were part of what it described as an organized Israeli-led plot.
Still, Trump claimed his threat – and then the decision not to intervene – stopped further bloodshed.
Weeks later, as the US and Israel launched a full-scale war against Iran, Trump called on Iranians to “seize the moment” and “take back” their country. “America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help,” he said.
But as Trump and the White House tired of the conflict, and the global economic repercussions worsened, their language softened and support for Iranian dissidents waned. When the US and Iran signed a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding on June 17, there was no mention of protesters, persecuted dissidents or human rights.
At the same time, as it held discussions with the US, Iran had already begun ramping up executions, human rights groups say.
“While the attention of the international community was on the war, the Iranian regime saw this as an opportunity to execute political prisoners because under normal circumstances these executions lead to international condemnation and they have a high political cost,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told CNN.
With each execution, the regime sends a chilling message: we’re still in charge, and dissent will not be tolerated.
The blank cheque seemingly afforded to the regime as the world hopes for peace – and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz – appears to hold little hope for Nikbakht’s brothers.
The pair were arrested before the massive January protests, at their home in Golpaygan. Human rights organizations say they were taken on October 25, 2025 when authorities tried to seize their land. The two brothers had been politically active for years, even participating in a campaign calling for a referendum on the Islamic Republic, but in early June were sentenced to death on the broad charge of “fesad fil arz” – a capital offense under Iranian law that translates as “corruption on Earth” – after being accused of encouraging young people to protest against the authorities.
“The Islamic Republic never wants to admit that it has political opponents or political prisoners. It always tries to portray politically active people as dangerous criminals, so it can claim they are a threat to society and justify sentencing them to death,” Nikbakht says. “In reality, it’s creating fear in society.”
Iran says all prisoners in the Islamic Republic are afforded due process. But Nikbakht says her brothers have been held without a proper trial for months and that their case – and their sentencing – was sped up after the war between the US and Iran began.
“The war really has had an impact,” she says.
Human rights groups say that in order to justify these executions, the regime is relying on forced confessions.
Nasser Bakerzadeh, 26, and Mehrab Abdollahzadeh, 28, are two examples. Earlier this year, they confessed to serious crimes.
“I photographed two police stations and sent the photos. I also took photos of a hall in an IRGC (Sepah) facility where soldiers were standing,” Bakerzadeh says in a video shared May 2 on Iranian state media, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But in calls from prison to relatives and rights groups during their final days, both denied the crimes to which they had publicly admitted, saying they had been tortured and forced to make false confessions.
“I was subjected to the most severe psychological torture. They left me alone in that cell for 20 days at a time,” Bakerzadeh said. “I had lost my mind.”
“You are hearing my voice from Urumieh Central Prison, and this may be the last time you hear it,” Abdollahzadeh is heard saying in a recording from December shared on February 19 by the NGO Kurdistan Human Rights. “From the very first day of my arrest, they forced confessions out of me through torture and threats, confessions that were entirely false. None of the charges against me are true. They know it, and God knows it. I am innocent.”
Human rights organizations say these retractions are not a surprise.
“All the political prisoners who have been executed in the past three months, our records indicate they were all sentenced based on confessions extracted after torture,” IHR’s Moghaddam says. “They’ve been facing lengthy solitary confinement, and of course there is no due process, no access to a lawyer of their choice.”
Both Bakerzadeh and Abdollahzadeh were hanged in early May.
Kurdish Iranian activist Hamid Chapati shared a cell with the two men, having spent several months at the notorious Urumieh Central Prison in West Azerbaijan province himself.
“For Nasser (Bakerzadeh) and Mehrab (Abdollahzadeh) and every prisoner sentenced to execution, every day can be the last day and every moment can be the last moment, at nights they cannot sleep,” he told CNN.
Chapati recently fled Iran for Iraq, fearing execution himself. He spoke with CNN from an undisclosed location.
Chapati said Bakerzadeh sent him a message through a mutual friend, days before he was executed, saying he wanted to speak one last time. But that conversation never happened.
“When I heard the news of his execution I felt like I was executed with him too,” Chapati said.
It’s because of reports like these that Nikbakht feels she can’t stop in her efforts. She has to be her brothers’ voice, using the international community and the media to raise the stakes for a regime eyeing their death.
But it’s not an easy task.
“Maybe sometimes I smile, but that’s all I can do in front of other people – to smile and appear strong,” she says. “Inside, though, I keep asking myself: Why is this happening? Why should people face this for wanting freedom? It’s incredibly hard.”
