First 2025 Public Hanging: Shoeib Rezapour Hanged on Bridge in Esfarayen

According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged on Behesht Esfarayen bridge in Esfarayen in North Khorasan province on 28 February. His identity has been established as 28-year-old Shoeib Rezapour. He was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder.

An informed source told IHRNGO: “Shoeib Rezapour was from a village in Esfarayen and was arrested for killing someone with a knife three and a half years ago.”

Hamshahri newspaper reported Shoeib’s execution without naming him.

Shoeib is the first person to be publicly hanged in 2025. Iran is one of the few countries in the world to carry out executions in public spaces. 2021 was the only year in more than a decade that the Islamic Republic did not carry out any public executions, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that year. Public executions resumed in 2022 with two people being hanged, and in 2023 the number of public executions rose again to seven. In 2024, four people were executed in public in Iran.