In a premeditated act of terror, the Iranian regime has unleashed a new wave of savage repression inside its dungeons against political prisoners. On the morning of Saturday, July 26, 2025, security forces stormed the political prisoners’ ward in Ghezel Hesar prison in a brutal operation designed to murder, silence, and intimidate.
The raid was a calculated military-style assault. Over 100 armed prison guards, accompanied by intelligence agents and acting on the direct orders of prison chief Allah Karam Azizi and his deputies Hassan Ghobadi and Esmail Farajnejad, stormed Unit 4. In a horrifying display of brutality, they shackled the political prisoners with handcuffs and leg irons, pulled bags over their heads, and dragged them across the floor. In the ensuing chaos, prisoners’ meager personal belongings were trampled and destroyed, and a number of inmates were left severely injured.
The primary mission: state-sanctioned murder and a cruel cover-up
https://twitter.com/en_simayazadi/status/1949469500602212637
The raid’s central objectives were murder and exile. During the assault, Khamenei’s henchmen singled out political prisoners and members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani. They were separated from the others and taken to solitary confinement for execution. This act is the horrifying culmination of a broader campaign of terror under Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidency, which targets organized opposition figures with sham trials and the gallows.
In a subsequent act of depravity, the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence is refusing to return the bodies of the executed martyrs to their families. This is a calculated attempt to prevent public mourning and bury them in secret, hiding the evidence of their crime against humanity.
Silencing a symbol of defiance: the exile of Saeed Masouri
The regime also used the raid to forcibly remove Saeed Masouri, one of Iran’s longest-serving political prisoners and an icon of steadfastness. After being violently seized, he was taken away for exile to the notoriously brutal Zahedan prison. This came just ten days after a previous attempt on July 16 to abduct Masouri was thwarted by the courageous collective resistance of his fellow inmates, who forced the guards to retreat. The regime, enraged by this act of solidarity, used the full force of the July 26 raid to finally achieve its goal of isolating this symbol of defiance.
In an open letter on July 17, Masouri had warned that the regime is planning the repeat of the 1988 massacre, a brutal event in which authorities executed more than 30,000 political prisoners, most of them members and supporters of PMOI. “Let the world hear this time that ‘a crime is in progress’ and, of course, a resistance against it,” Masouri warned.
Today, the Iranian regime executed #Mehdi_Hassani and #BehrouzEhsani, two @Mojahedineng supporters. A week earlier, political prisoner Saeed Masouri wrote, "A crime is in progress." On July 27, that crime occurred at dawn.pic.twitter.com/6u9SRf67F0 https://t.co/RNXlC7T1uI
— SIMAY AZADI TV (@en_simayazadi) July 27, 2025
A desperate regime acts out of fear
This coordinated brutality is not a sign of strength, but of a desperate regime lashing out in fear of a defiant populace and its organized resistance. To conceal its crimes, the regime has imposed a complete information blackout, cutting off all contact between the political prisoners and their families since Friday, July 25, the day before the raid. On Sunday, July 27, when anxious families, including the family of Mehdi Hassani, gathered at the prison gates seeking news of their loved ones, they were met with a wall of silence and received no answers. This callous disregard exposes a regime terrified of accountability and the public backlash its atrocities would ignite.
An urgent call for international action
Silence and inaction in the face of such flagrant crimes against humanity serve only to embolden the ruling clerics in Tehran. Continuing to trample on fundamental human rights, the regime perceives international indifference as a green light to continue its campaign of torture, execution, and slaughter. In a statement, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), called for “immediate action by the United Nations, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, and all international human rights organizations to secure the release of political prisoners and to ascertain the conditions of political prisoners in Ghezel Hesar Prison.”