Iran has executed at least 1,000 people so far in 2025, an NGO said on Tuesday, denouncing a "mass killing campaign" in prisons in the Islamic republic.
At least 64 executions took place in the past week alone, an average of more than nine hangings per day, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group, which counts and verifies executions in Iran on a daily basis.
With more than three months of 2025 still to go, the figure is already the highest since IHR began keeping records in 2008, topping the 975 executions recorded last year.
Iran carried out a spree of executions in the 1980s and early 1990s in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war.
But activists say the Islamic republic is now using capital punishment more intensely than at any time in the past three decades, with the clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei challenged by 2022-2023 protests and the 12-day war against Israel in June.
"In recent months the Islamic republic has begun a mass killing campaign in Iran's prisons, the dimensions of which -- in the absence of serious international reactions -- are expanding every day," IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is set to potentially cross paths with Western leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.
Iran's nuclear programme is likely dominate the agenda after the UN Security Council voted to reimpose sanctions.
But Amiry-Moghaddam said the executions "amount to crimes against humanity and must be placed at the top of the international community's agenda".
"Any dialogue between countries committed to the foundations of human rights and the Islamic republic that does not include the execution crisis in Iran is unacceptable."
IHR emphasised that its figures for executions are "an absolute minimum", with the real number likely higher "due to the lack of transparency and restrictions on reporting".
Executions in Iran are currently carried out exclusively by hanging, although other methods have been used in past.
Most executions take place in prison, although there are occasional public hangings.
According to human rights groups including Amnesty International, Iran is the world's second most prolific executioner after China, which is believed to execute thousands each year although no precise figures are available.
With AFP
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