Memorials
In-depth biographical memorials of people executed or killed in custody by the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979–2020s. Habib Elghanian, Farrokhroo Parsa, Mona Mahmudnizhad, Zahra Kazemi, Navid Afkari and others.
Memorials
In-depth biographies of people executed or killed in custody by the Islamic Republic of Iran across 47 years — from the firing squads of 1979 to the secret hangings of the 2020s. The chronological list records the names; these pages tell the stories.
Habib Elghanian
Iranian-Jewish industrialist and community leader
“On 9 May 1979, two months after the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s most prominent Jewish industrialist was put up against a wall and shot. His killing was the signal flare of what followed.”
Read the biography →
Amir-Abbas Hoveyda
Prime Minister of Iran, 1965–1977
“Twelve years as prime minister, then a two-session tribunal with no defence lawyer. The procedure used on him is the procedure the Islamic Republic still uses today.”
Read the biography →
Sadegh Ghotbzadeh
Foreign Minister of Iran, 1979–1980
“He arranged the flight that brought Khomeini home. Three years later the revolution he built put him on television to confess, then hanged him in Evin.”
Read the biography →
Pakhshan Azizi
Kurdish social worker, under sentence of death
“She spent years in camps caring for women who survived ISIS. A Tehran court called that armed rebellion and sentenced her to death.”
Read the biography →
Nader Jahanbani
Lieutenant-general, Imperial Iranian Air Force
“He had built Iran’s aerobatic squadron and trained a generation of fighter pilots. Five weeks after the revolution, he was led to a school rooftop in Tehran and shot.”
Read the biography →
Farrokhroo Parsa
Physician, educator, first woman cabinet minister of Iran
“She had been Iran’s first woman cabinet minister. A year after the revolution, she was sewn into a sack and shot — for, the court said, “corrupting the earth” by removing the veil from schoolgirls.”
Read the biography →
Mona Mahmudnizhad
Iranian Baháʼí schoolgirl
“She was seventeen. Her crime, the court said, was teaching children. The night she was hanged, she asked to kiss the rope before placing it round her own neck.”
Read the biography →
Zahra Kazemi
Iranian-Canadian photojournalist
“She had photographed grieving families outside Evin Prison. Nineteen days later, the prison’s own intelligence officers killed her.”
Read the biography →
Navid Afkari
Iranian wrestler
“He was 27, a champion wrestler from Shiraz, and his appeal was still pending. They hanged him before dawn anyway.”
Read the biography →
Neda Agha-Soltan
Student and music pupil
“She was not marching. She had stepped out of a stifling car into the heat of Kargar Avenue. One shot, and forty seconds of phone video, made her the face of a movement.”
Read the biography →
Nika Shakarami
Schoolgirl, 16
“She climbed onto a bin, burned her headscarf, and telephoned a friend to say she was being chased. Her body came back ten days later.”
Read the biography →
Hadis Najafi
Shop and restaurant worker, 22
“She gathered her hair and tied it back as she walked toward the police line. She was shot minutes later.”
Read the biography →
Kian Pirfalak
Schoolboy, 9
“He built a small wooden boat for a school project. Nine days later he was shot in the back seat of his father’s car.”
Read the biography →
Melina Asadi
Child, 3
“She was taken to a funeral, the one gathering a mourning town is allowed. The mourners were fired on.”
Read the biography →
Taha Safari
Schoolboy, 16
“His body was withheld from his family — the state’s way of deciding how a death may be remembered.”
Read the biography →