“The first. The state wanted everyone to understand there would be others.”
- Age
- 23
- Arrested
- 25 September 2022, Sattar Khan Street, Tehran
- Charge
- Moharebeh — “waging war against God”
- Trial
- Single closed session, Revolutionary Court
- Executed
- 8 December 2022
- Significance
- First protester executed in the 2022–23 uprising
Who was Mohsen Shekari?
Mohsen Shekari was twenty-three and worked in a Tehran café. He was arrested on 25 September 2022 at a roadblock on Sattar Khan Street and accused of wounding a Basij member with a knife. His trial lasted a single closed session before a Revolutionary Court; the confession broadcast by state television bore the marks of coercion that Iranian forced confessions have carried for four decades.
He was hanged on 8 December 2022. He was the first protester executed during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, and the speed of the case — arrest to execution in ten weeks — was the point: the judiciary was demonstrating a tempo, not adjudicating a crime.
How the Islamic Republic executes protesters
Protest executions in Iran follow a fixed sequence: arrest during or shortly after a demonstration; weeks of incommunicado detention; a confession broadcast on state television; a Revolutionary Court hearing lasting hours rather than days, usually without counsel of the defendant’s choosing; a moharebeh or efsad-fel-arz conviction; a rejected appeal; and a dawn hanging announced afterwards by the judiciary’s own news agency.
None of that survives contact with the fair-trial guarantees of Article 14 of the ICCPR, which Iran ratified in 1975. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran and the UN Fact-Finding Mission have both concluded that executions arising from protest cases amount to arbitrary deprivation of life, and that when carried out as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians they constitute crimes against humanity. Mohsen Shekari’s case followed the sequence exactly.
Video and archive
No verified video of Mohsen Shekari is in the public record that this project can confirm. The film below documents the events in which he was killed, and the Javidnaman archive holds the family photographs and case notes for the January 2026 dead.
The hijab protests that changed Iran. More documentary footage is collected on the videos page.
Sources
- Amnesty International — Iran
- Iran Human Rights
- Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO)
- HRANA — Human Rights Activists News Agency
- Sources and methodology on this site
Why this page exists
Names surface for a few days and then disappear under the next news cycle. This page keeps a dated, citation-ready record of what is known about Mohsen Shekari, with the photograph his family chose to release and links to the monitors who verify such cases. Corrections and additional documentation are welcome through the organisations listed under sources and methodology.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Mohsen Shekari?
Mohsen Shekari, 23, was hanged on 8 December 2022 after a closed-door trial on a moharebeh charge — the first protester executed during Iran's Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
When was Mohsen Shekari executed?
Mohsen Shekari was executed on 8 December 2022.
What was Mohsen Shekari charged with?
Protest executions in Iran are almost always brought under moharebeh ("waging war against God") or efsad-fel-arz ("corruption on earth"), capital charges decided by Revolutionary Courts in closed sessions that fall far short of the fair-trial standards of Article 14 of the ICCPR.
Are protest executions in Iran lawful?
No. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran and the UN Fact-Finding Mission have found that death sentences imposed after coerced confessions and closed proceedings amount to arbitrary deprivation of life, and that the practice, applied systematically against protesters, can constitute a crime against humanity.
Related pages
- Majidreza Rahnavard — another biography from the same period.
- The Two Nights — 8–9 January 2026 in detail.
- The protest record · Faces · Victims database
- All memorial biographies · In Memoriam
