The Iranian regime is laying the ground for another massacre of political prisoners. On Friday, August 8, 2025, authorities transferred five death-row political prisoners, all supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), to a notorious execution site. The destination, Ghezel Hesar Prison, is particularly chilling, as it was the site of a brutal state-sanctioned murder of two PMOI members just two weeks ago, making the threat to these five men immediate and undeniable.
https://twitter.com/en_simayazadi/status/1953791684669509728
A pretext for repression
The transfer was part of a larger, chaotic reshuffling of inmates that began in late June after an airstrike damaged a section of Tehran’s Evin Prison. The regime claimed the mass relocation to Fashafuyeh Prison was a security measure. However, its true purpose was repression. On June 25, the Iranian regime had forcibly moved all prisoners from wards 4, 7, and 8 of Evin, which house many political prisoners, in a violent operation.
Following the airstrike, the Iranian Resistance had declared that if the regime could not guarantee the safety of prisoners, it must release them. Instead, the regime used the crisis as a pretext for a violent crackdown. During the return transfer on August 8, guards brutally separated the five PMOI supporters. Fellow prisoners who protested this inhumane act were also severely beaten, revealing the regime’s absolute intolerance for any dissent.
Targets of a fearful regime
The five men facing execution are dedicated activists targeted for their political beliefs. They were sentenced to death in December 2024 by the Revolutionary Court on charges of “armed rebellion” and “membership in the PMOI”:
- Vahid Bani Amerian, 33, holds a master’s degree in management.
- Babak Alipour, 34, is a law graduate with a prior four-year prison sentence for his activism.
- Shahrokh Daneshvarkar, 58, is a civil engineer.
- Pouya Ghobadi, 33, is an electrical engineer who had been arrested twice before.
- Mohammad Taghavi, 59, is a veteran political prisoner from the 1980s and 1990s.
Their steadfast resistance, even after years of imprisonment, represents the enduring spirit of opposition that the regime is desperate to extinguish.
In an urgent call, Amnesty International called on the regime to “halt any plans to execute” the five prisoners and warned, “Global action is needed NOW urging Iranian authorities to halt any plans to execute them!”
https://twitter.com/AmnestyIran/status/1953811747308999049
A chilling precedent: The Ghezel Hesar raid
The transfer of the five prisoners to Ghezel Hesar is not an isolated event but part of a terrifying, premeditated campaign of state terror. This became horrifically clear on Saturday, July 26, when over 100 armed guards stormed Unit 4 of the same prison in a military-style assault. During this raid, Khamenei’s henchmen singled out and executed PMOI members Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, later refusing to return their bodies to their grieving families in a cruel attempt to prevent public mourning.
The regime also used the raid to forcibly exile Saeed Masouri, one of Iran’s longest-serving political prisoners, to the notoriously brutal Zahedan prison. This was a clear act of reprisal after Masouri and his fellow inmates had courageously resisted a previous abduction attempt. In a letter just before his exile, Masouri warned that the regime was planning a repeat of the 1988 massacre, urging the world to hear that “a crime is in progress.”
An urgent call for international action
With the brutal raid on Ghezel Hesar and the execution of Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani serving as a horrifying blueprint, the threat to the five newly transferred prisoners is undeniable. The Iranian Resistance urgently calls on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur on Iran, and all international human rights bodies to take immediate and decisive action. The world must demand to know the status of these five prisoners and intervene to save their lives. Inaction is complicity in the face of the regime’s state-sanctioned murder.