ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Political prisoner Gholamreza Khani Shokrab, who was abducted from Iraq by Iranian agents last year, has been hanged after being accused of spying for Israel, Tehran’s state media reported on Tuesday.
Hengaw Human Rights Organisation, which monitors human rights violations across Iran, reported on last Wednesday that Shokrab, 34, from Ardabil, an MMA champion and internationally recognized referee, had been transferred from the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran to solitary confinement in Ghezelhesar Prison in Karaj, a sign that execution was imminent.
State media said Shokrab acted as the head of a spy network for Israel and recruited people to work with the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. It also said he was involved in a brawl, acted like a “thug,” and had a history of violence.
Iranian agents have abducted several journalists and politically active exiles from Iraq, Turkey, and Gulf countries in recent years and put them to death. Rouhollah Zam, an influential Iranian journalist based in Paris, was lured to Iraq before he was abducted and hanged in December 2020.
Hengaw said Shokrab had a similar fate.
“Shokrab was arrested last year during a trip to Iraq by forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He had been living in Turkey before his arrest and had traveled to Iraq for pilgrimage at the request of one of his relatives, where he was arrested by Iranian security forces and abducted to Iran,” Hengaw said.
The Norway-based rights group said authorities also detained his brother, Esmail Khani, 43, on politically motivated charges because of his connection to Shokrab, and that he has been sentenced to prison.
Iran regularly executes people on charges that human rights organizations say are trumped up, including cooperation with Israel and the US. Iranian security forces systematically use torture and degrading treatment to force prisoners to make self-incriminating confessions on video, which are then broadcast on TV to justify their execution.
“He was given a mission to attack a person in Tehran under the cover and pretext of a financial dispute, and to incapacitate him for at least six months. The convict accepted the offer and received payments for it,” state media said about Shorab without stating when he was hanged.
The executions of protesters and political prisoners come at a time when Iran and the US are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding in which the issue of human rights has not been discussed.
Iran has long used the death penalty as a tool of state repression and to stifle dissent. Rights groups say authorities have executed at least 36 political prisoners since the start of the war on February 28, with at least 78 other political prisoners at risk of imminent execution.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that Iran carried out 2,063 executions in 2025 - the highest number recorded in around three and a half decades. Two human rights organizations have warned that if the current regime stays in power, it could carry out another mass execution of prisoners detained during the January protests and the recent war.