In the past week (from April 12 to 18), henchmen hanged at least 65 prisoners. Forty-five of these have been executed just in Karaj City prisons. On April 13, eight prisoners were hanged in Karaj’s Central Prison while 13 other prisoners were executed in Ghezel Hessar Prison. On the next day, 19 prisoners were hanged in Gohardasht Prison. And on April 15, henchmen hanged five prisoners in Gohardasht. Among those executed was Javad Saberi, a juvenile at the time of his arrest.

During this period, one prisoner was hanged on April 12 in Mehriz (Yazd Province), eight prisoners were hanged on April 12 and 15 in Arak, three were hanged on April 14 and 15 in Shiraz, four prisoners were hanged on April 13 in Esfahan, and four were hanged in Zahedan on April 18. Two of those executions, in Mehriz and in Shiraz, were public hangings.

A considerable number of prisoners executed were young under 30 and were among the prisoners who had protested the wave of collective executions in Ghezel Hessar Prison back in August. A number of the prisoners executed on pretext of drug smuggling had no drug related cases according to their families.

Prisoners in Karaj prisons staged protests on April 12 following the transfer of their cellmates to solitary confinement in preparation to carry out the criminal execution sentences. Protesting prisoner chanted: “We shall not let you kill us”. Similarly, families of the prisoners on the verge of execution also gathered in front of the prisons and shouted: “We shall not let you execute them”.

It is said that in the weeks ahead, the clerical regime is planning to hang 200 prisoners on the death row in Gohardasht and Ghezel Hessar prisons. Many of the families of prisoners have been asked to refer to prisons to meet with their loved ones for the last time. In fear of prisoners’ revolt, mullahs’ regime has transferred those to be executed to prisons in nearby cities, including the Larger Tehran Prison in Hassanabad Varamin Road and the Central Prison of Qazvin.

The Iranian Resistance urges the people, especially the youth, to protest these criminal executions and to express their sympathy and solidarity with the victims’ families. It further stresses that the silence and inaction of the international community for the sake of nuclear talks in the wake of the spike in collective and arbitrary executions only encourages these murderers to kill more of the Iranian people while continuing their march to obtain the nuclear bomb.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

April 19, 2015