Iran hangs top university student on Mossad, CIA spying charges

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian authorities on Monday executed another prisoner accused of espionage and cooperation with US and Israeli intelligence agencies, according to state-affiliated media, amid a broader crackdown that has seen dozens executed since the start of the war.

“Erfan Shakurzadeh, son of Jafar, was hanged for the crime of collaboration with the American intelligence service and the Mossad spy service,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported on Monday. It added that, according to court documents, he had attempted to provide “classified” information to “enemy services” while working in a sensitive position at one of the country’s scientific organizations involved in satellite technology.

Shakourzadeh, a 29-year-old student at Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, was detained in early 2025 by IRGC agents on charges of working with hostile states, according to the Oslo-based Hengaw Human Rights Organization. His family was initially given no clear information about his whereabouts or the case against him.

Hengaw said Shakourzadeh was held in solitary confinement for nine months and subjected to severe torture by IRGC intelligence agents.

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 two dozen political prisoners since the start of the war on February 28. 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.

Human rights organizations said Friday that the Supreme Court had upheld Shakourzadeh’s death sentence and that he had been transferred to solitary confinement in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, Alborz province, a move often seen as a sign that an execution is imminent.

State media and IRGC-affiliated outlets did not provide evidence supporting the espionage allegations against Shakourzadeh.

Shakourzadeh managed to smuggle out a letter from prison in which he maintained his innocence.

“I am Erfan Shakourzadeh, one of the few talented individuals who chose not to emigrate... I was arrested on baseless espionage charges and, after eight and a half months of torture and solitary confinement, was forced to make a coerced confession. Do not let another innocent life be lost in silence,” he said, according to Hengaw.

The recent wave of executions has outraged human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, which has called on the international community to stop Tehran from carrying out these executions, including those of Kurdish political prisoners.

“When a bright young man, at an age when many are just beginning life, is rushed with such haste from the interrogation room to the gallows, it defines the stark failure of a system that acts faster to take a life than to save one - and in my view, it fundamentally challenges the concept of justice in Iran,” an Iranian from Tehran wrote on X after Shakourzadeh’s execution.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior Iran researcher Bahar Saba said Thursday that Iran has executed at least 28 people on “politically motivated charges” since March 18.

In late April, the United Nations confirmed 21 executions and more than 4,000 arrests since the war began. Individuals detained during the 2022 protests, the January 2026 demonstrations, the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025, and those arrested during the current conflict have faced expedited legal proceedings on charges including espionage and “collaboration with enemy.”

Iran’s judiciary chief has said authorities will show no mercy toward individuals accused of cooperating with enemy countries, particularly the United States and Israel.