Iran publicly executed 19-year-old wrestler Saleh Mohammadi in Qom on Thursday alongside Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi, men the Iranian authorities said had been convicted of killing two police officers during unrest on 8 January. State media said Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld the sentences and that all three were found guilty of murder and moharebeh, or waging war against God, one of the gravest charges in the country’s penal system. Rights groups said the men had been swept up in the crackdown that followed this year’s anti-government protests and were put to death after proceedings they described as grossly unfair.
Mohammadi’s case drew particular attention because of his age and his standing as a promising wrestler from Qom. Amnesty International said he was 18 when he was sentenced to death on 4 February, less than three weeks after his arrest on 15 January, and that he later turned 19 in prison. Iran Human Rights said he had won a medal at an international freestyle wrestling competition in Russia in 2024, while rights advocates and Iranian activists described him as one of a new generation of athletes whose public profile made his case especially symbolic.
According to Iranian officials, the three men took part in attacks with knives and other weapons during the January demonstrations in Qom, resulting in the deaths of two police officers. Reuters reported that the judiciary also accused them of acting in favour of Israel and the United States, language that has repeatedly appeared in official Iranian descriptions of protest cases. Iran International, citing the judiciary-linked Mizan news agency, said the three were accused of attacking the officers with knives and swords during the protest on 8 January.
Human rights groups challenged both the process and the evidence. Amnesty International said Mohammadi retracted his confessions in court and told judges they had been extracted under torture, but the court dismissed that claim without any investigation. The Center for Human Rights in Iran said the three executions followed trials that bore no resemblance to due process and were built on forced confessions. Iran Human Rights said Mohammadi’s own testimony that he had been tortured was rejected, despite his later retraction in court.
The allegations surrounding Mohammadi’s treatment in custody were stark. The Center for Human Rights in Iran said a source told Amnesty International that his hands had been fractured from beatings. Amnesty said dozens of people linked to the January protests had faced torture-tainted confessions, incommunicado detention and denial of access to independent legal counsel. Those details have become central to the outcry over the case, because rights groups say the state moved from mass arrests and lethal force in the streets to a conveyor belt of capital cases in the courts.
Amnesty had already warned in February that at least 30 people linked to the January uprising were at risk of execution, including children and young adults. It named Mohammadi among at least eight people already sentenced to death and said the wider group included two 17-year-old children. Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said at the time that the authorities were “weaponizing the death penalty” to instil fear and crush a population demanding fundamental change.
That warning now appears to have been borne out. The Center for Human Rights in Iran said dozens of other protesters arrested in January remain at risk of execution, including children and teenagers, and warned that tens of thousands of detainees from the protest wave, along with hundreds arrested during the current war, were vulnerable to fast-tracked proceedings that could end in death sentences. In its account of Thursday’s events, the group said the public hangings were designed to terrorise the population and send a message that dissent would be met with death.
Mohammadi’s death has also resonated because of the place wrestlers occupy in Iranian public life. Wrestling is one of the country’s most celebrated sports, and athletes often enjoy a stature beyond the arena. For critics of the authorities, the execution echoed the case of Navid Afkari, the 27-year-old Greco-Roman wrestler executed in September 2020 after being convicted of killing a security guard during anti-government protests in 2018. Reuters reported at the time that Afkari had said he was tortured into making a false confession, a claim denied by Iran’s judiciary, and that his execution prompted international outcry, including an appeal for mercy from the International Olympic Committee.
Rights campaigners drew that comparison again this week. Fox News quoted Iranian combat athlete and human rights activist Nima Far as saying Mohammadi’s execution was “a blatant political murder” and part of a pattern of targeting athletes to crush dissent. Far also urged the International Olympic Committee and United World Wrestling to take stronger action. While such demands remain political rather than official, they reflect a broader campaign by exiled Iranian athletes and activists who argue that sporting bodies should no longer treat these cases as purely domestic judicial matters.
The timing added to the sense of mounting alarm. Iran International reported that on the previous day Iranian authorities had executed Kourosh Keyvani, a Swedish-Iranian dual national, after convicting him of espionage for Israel. Sweden’s foreign minister later confirmed that a Swedish citizen had been executed and said the legal proceedings had fallen short of due process standards. The Center for Human Rights in Iran said the back-to-back executions illustrated how capital punishment was being used both against protesters and against those accused of espionage during a period of war and internal repression.
For Mohammadi’s supporters, the case had become a race against time long before Thursday. Iran Human Rights said in February that his sentence marked a dangerous escalation and warned that the authorities had a history of rushing executions after protest-related convictions. Amnesty said the Iranian authorities had repeatedly threatened to impose the maximum punishment in the shortest possible time. By the time Mohammadi was hanged in Qom, rights groups had spent weeks arguing that his prosecution was not an isolated case but part of a wider effort to convert the January crackdown into a new phase of judicial terror.
His death leaves behind the image of a teenager who had been known publicly as a wrestler before he became known internationally as a death row prisoner. The Iranian state says he was one of three men responsible for the deaths of police officers during violent unrest. Human rights groups say he was a young protester convicted in a torture-tainted trial and executed in public after being denied a meaningful defence. What is not in dispute is that, by Thursday morning in Qom, one of Iran’s most closely watched protest cases had ended with a 19-year-old athlete on the gallows, and with fresh warnings from rights organisations that more executions may follow.
