Mohammad Zakeri 11th Man Publicly Hanged in Iran/VIDEO

According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in the Borazjan cemetery on 2 December 2025. His identity has been established as Mohammad Zakeri from the village of Dasht Gour Shabankareh in Bushehr. He was arrested seven years ago and sentenced to public qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder by the Criminal Court.

An informed source told IHRNGO: “Mohammad was arrested in relation to the murder of an eight-year-old girl. The child’s mother also faced criminal charges. The child’s father who was imprisoned in Borazjan Prison was willing to accept blood money but the mother was pressured into signing the document for execution. The father was brought to the scene of the execution from prison.”

At the time of writing, his execution has not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

Mohammad Zakeri is eleventh man to be publicly hanged in Iran 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.

Those charged with the umbrella term of “intentional murder” are sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) regardless of intent or circumstances due to a lack of grading in law. Once a defendant has been convicted, the victim’s family are required to choose between death as retribution, diya (blood money) or forgiveness.

Crucially, while an indicative diya amount is set by the Judiciary every year, there is no legal limit to how much can be demanded by families of the victims. IHRNGO has recorded many cases where defendants are executed because they cannot afford to pay the blood money. Should the victim’s family choose execution, they are not only encouraged to attend, but also to physically carry out the execution themselves.

According to IHRNGO’s 2024 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 419 people including a juvenile offender and 19 women, were executed for murder charges, the highest number of qisas executions since 2010. Only 12% of the recorded qisas executions were announced by official sources. In 2024, Iran Human Rights also recorded 649 cases of families choosing diya or forgiveness instead of qisas executions. At least 641 people were executed for murder charges in the first eleven months of 2025.

The footage of Mohammad Zakeri’s public hanging can be viewed here. (Warning: the video contains distressing content and is not suitable for viewers under 18.)