URGENT APPEAL BY HANDS OFF CAIN TO SAVE THE LIVES OF POLITICAL PRISONERS ON DEATH ROW

To the kind attention of

Volker Türk, High Commissioner for human rights
Mai Sato, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran
Antonio Tajani, the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Italy

Hands off Cain, the international organisation behind the approval of the UNGA Resolution for a universal moratorium on executions, urges all of you to act in order to stop the imminent executions of political prisoners on death row in Iran.

On April 16, 2025, five political prisoners sentenced to death—Vahid Bani Amerian, Seyed Mohammad Taghavi, Babak Alipour, Pouya Ghobadi, and Shahrokh Daneshvarkar— had to be transferred from Ward 4 of Evin Prison to Ghezel Hesar, which is one of the main execution sites in Iran, where a number of inmates are regularly executed.

The transfer was ordered by the criminal judge Iman Afshari, according an announcement made by the Hedayatollah Farzadi, the head of Evin Prison. In response to prisoners’ objections to the transfer, Farzadi threatened that they would be forcibly moved using prison guards.

Following Farzadi’s orders, as of 16 April, the doors of Ward 4 in Evin have been locked, and the prisoners have been isolated to prevent any protest.

These prisoners were sentenced to death in December 2024 by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Iman Afshari, on charges of “membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK),” “assembly and collusion against national security,” “armed uprising against the regime,” “forming a group with the intent to disturb national security,” and “destruction of public property using a launcher weapon.”

Previously, on January 26, 2025, and April 3, 2025, three other political prisoners—Behrouz Ehsani Eslamlou, Mehdi Hassani, and Seyed Abolhassan Montazer—who were sentenced to death on similar charges, were suddenly transferred from Evin to Ghezel Hesar.

Meanwhile, four Baluch political prisoners whose death sentences have been finalized are at imminent risk of execution. On April 9, 2025, the request for retrial of death-row political prisoner Abdolrahim Ghanbarzehi Gorgij was rejected. Prior to this, the Supreme Court of the regime upheld the death sentences of his three co-defendants—Eidou Shahbakhsh, Abdolghani Shahbakhsh, and Soleiman Shahbakhsh, who was only 12 years old at the time of the alleged offense—and also denied their requests for retrial.

Iran has the record number of executions in the world if we compare the number of executions with the Iranian population. Last year the terrible number of almost 1000 executions was reached and this years, things seems not to be better, with at least 319 executions from the beginning of the year according our data. Those political prisoners on the Iranian death row, with the support of hundreds

of international NGOs as well as of important people all over the world are calling to stop executions though a nonviolent action of hunger strike each Tuesday.

We are aware that the power of the Iranian regime is based on the violent repression of any dissent but we cannot be complicit of this massacre.

We strongly believe that a stop of these imminent executions as well as the introduction of a moratorium on capital executions in Iran could save human lives and our sense of human beings.