Ali Khamenei's Judiciary Hanged Two More January Protesters - Seven Executions Now Trace Back to One Isfahan Case

Iran executed Alireza Sepahi and Alireza Raisi at Isfahan Central Prison on October 5, extending a chain of executions tied to the January protest case centered on Alikhani Square. State media says the defendants were convicted over violence in which four security personnel were killed. Human-rights monitors, lawyers and the UN special rapporteur on Iran have focused on a different part of the chain: torture allegations, contested confessions, restricted defense rights and the speed with which capital punishment continued despite review efforts.

That distinction matters. The state is entitled to investigate killings. It is not entitled to make the investigation itself immune from scrutiny. The accountability question is therefore not whether violence occurred in Isfahan, but whether the judiciary under the Islamic Republic produced a process capable of distinguishing individual criminal responsibility from collective punishment of a protest movement.

Iran International reported that UN rapporteur Mai Sato had raised serious concerns about the case, including reports that Sepahi's mother was tortured in front of him and that Sepahi and a cousin were beaten and tortured in front of relatives. Sato also said the execution went forward while Sepahi's lawyer was still trying to obtain review. Iran Human Rights said the latest deaths brought the number of people executed in connection with the Alikhani Square case to seven since July and described the proceedings as marred by due-process violations and torture allegations.

The details around Sepahi make the coercive machinery visible at the level of one life. IranWire reported that he and Mahshad Keshani, who is herself imprisoned, married in prison shortly before his execution. His lawyer had entered the case during the judicial-review stage. A previous execution attempt in July was interrupted after Sepahi suffered a medical emergency. The delay did not become a meaningful reconsideration of the evidence; by October, the death sentence had been carried out.

The judiciary's official account must still be represented accurately. Reuters reported that Mizan said Sepahi and Raisi were convicted on charges including membership in an armed rebel group, "waging war against God," spreading corruption on earth and involvement in the deaths of security officers. Those are the state's allegations and legal findings. They do not erase the separate evidence about how the proceedings were conducted.

The political lever ultimately sits above individual judges. Under Ali Khamenei (opens in a new tab), Iran's coercive institutions have repeatedly treated mass dissent as a security threat rather than a political signal. President Masoud Pezeshkian (opens in a new tab) operates inside that system, but the judiciary and security state are not primarily presidential institutions.

The longer causal arc runs through state repression (opens in a new tab) and the prevalence of political imprisonment (opens in a new tab). The reference point is not that every protest case is identical to the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran (opens in a new tab). It is that protest, detention, opaque prosecution and punishment repeatedly form one accountability chain.

Seven executions from one protest case are not merely seven judicial outcomes. They are a measure of what the state is willing to do after the street has gone quiet.