Five Men Hanged in Hamedan

According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, three men were hanged in Hamedan Central Prison on 17 June 2026. Their identities have been established as 27-year-old Ramin Bagheri from Hamedan, Alireza Maleki, a 29-year-old Kurdish man from Saqqez, and Farzad Bahrami, a 36-year-old father of one from Hamedan.

They were all sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for separate murders. Ramin was arrested six years ago ,and Alireza and Farzad were arrested around four years ago.

Two other men were hanged at the prison on 16 June. They have been identified as 30-year-old Samad Naderpour and 35-year-old Hossein Shahamat, both Zanjan natives. They were arrested two years ago and sentenced to death on drug-related charges. Their executions were carried out without prior notice, depriving them of last family visits.

At the time of writing, none of their executions have been reported by domestic media or officials 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. In March 2026, the indicative diya was set at 2.1 billion tomans (approx. €10,700) for a Muslim man and 1.05 billion tomans (€5,350) for a Muslim woman, a 75% increase compared to the previous year. 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 2025 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 747 people including 48 women, were executed for murder charges, the highest number of qisas executions since 2010. Under 7% of the recorded qisas executions were announced by official sources. In 2025, IHRNGO also recorded 566 cases of families choosing diya or forgiveness instead of qisas executions.