IHRNGO Condemns Baluch Political Prisoner Rostam Zeinoldini’s Execution

Iran Human RIghts (IHRNGO); April 27, 2025: Rostam Zeinoldini, a Baluch political prisoner  sentenced to death for his alleged ties to Jaish al-Adl, was executed in Zahedan Central Prison.

Emphasising the lack of minimum fair trial standards in the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, Iran Human Rights calls on the international community and the people of Iran to react to the widespread executions in Iran. He is the sixth Baluch political prisoner executed in the past two weeks. Five other Baluch political prisoners were also executed earlier in Mashhad Central Prison earlier this month.

IHRNGO Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “The public, media and the international community must react strongly to the executions of Baluch political prisoners just as they do to the executions of other political prisoners.” He added: “The Islamic Republic tries to lower public sensitivity towards these executions by labeling them with accusations such as terrorism and separatism, in order to lower their political cost. The public and the international community must respond to the execution of a Baluch, Kurdish or Arab political prisoner in the same way they reacted to the executions of the protesters of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement.”

An overview of IHRNGO reports between 2010-2024 shows that at least 164 people were executed for affiliation to banned political and armed groups. Of those, 85 (52%) were Kurdish, 45 (29%) were Baluch and 24 (16%) were Arab, with a majority of them being Sunni Muslims.

According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man hanged in Zahedan Central Prison on 26 April 2025. His identity has been established as 30-year-old Rostam Zeinoldini, a Baluch father of two from the village of Sourja in Sistan and Baluchistan province. He was arrested mid-2023 and subsequently sentenced to death on security-related charges. 

The Islamic Republic uses the capital security-related charges of moharebeh (enmity against god), efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth) and baghy (armed rebellion) against its dissidents.

An informed source told IHRNGO: “Rostam Zeinoldini was tortured to extract false confessions and did not have access to a lawyer throughout the legal proceedings.”

The security-related charges of moharebeh, efsad-fil-arz and baghy have been used to execute countless political and ordinary crime prisoners in the last 46 years. From the bloody decade of the 1980s to present day, Revolutionary Courts around the country have handed down death sentences based on torture-tainted confessions after trials that have been described as kangaroo courts. 

According to IHRNGO’s 2024 Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, ethnic minorities in Iran are overrepresented in death penalty statistics. According to the present report, 145 people were executed in the 4 ethnic provinces of West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Sistan and Baluchistan, and Kurdistan in 2024.