Iran executes Esmail Fekri in secret on espionage charges amid conflict with Israel
Hengaw – Monday, June 16, 2025
As the military conflict between Iran and Israel entered its fourth consecutive day, Iranian authorities executed Esmail Fekri, a 30-year-old resident of Tehran, in Ghezel Hesar Prison on charges of espionage for Israel. The execution was carried out in secret, without prior notice to his family or legal counsel.
According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Fekri was executed at dawn on Monday, June 16, 2025. He had been arrested two years earlier in Tehran and later sentenced to death by Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari, on charges of “collaboration and espionage for the state of Israel.”
The state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), confirmed the execution, stating that Fekri had attempted to pass sensitive classified information—including details on strategic locations and elites—to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad in exchange for financial compensation.
A source close to Fekri’s family told Hengaw that he was arrested in November 2022 by IRGC intelligence agents on a street in Tehran. He was held for five months in an IRGC detention facility, during which he was subjected to torture, denied access to legal representation, and barred from contacting his family.
Hengaw condemns the secret and retaliatory execution of Esmail Fekri and warns of the potential execution of at least seven other prisoners currently on death row for similar charges. The organization calls on international human rights bodies and legal institutions to take immediate and serious action to prevent further retaliatory executions.
According to Hengaw’s documented statistics, at least 13 people have been executed in Iran over the past 30 months on charges of “collaboration with or espionage for Israel.” Additionally, seven political prisoners—Azad Shojaei, Edris Eli, Shahin Vasaf, Naser Bokorzadeh, Rasoul Ahmad Mohammad, Mohammad Amin Mahdi Shayesteh, and Ahmad Reza Jalali—are currently at imminent risk of execution on similar charges.
