Three Kurdish political prisoners executed on charges of espionage for Israel
Hengaw – Wednesday, June 25, 2025
The death sentences of three Kurdish prisoners — Idris Ali and Azad Shojaei, both from Sardasht, and Rasoul Ahmad Rasoul from Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan — were secretly carried out at Urmia Central Prison. The three had previously been convicted by the Iranian judiciary on charges of espionage for Israel.
According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, at dawn on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, Idris Ali, 32, Azad Shojaei, and Rasoul Ahmad Rasoul were executed in secrecy. They were denied a final meeting with their families.
State-run outlets, including Mizan News Agency, confirmed the executions, claiming they were part of the judiciary’s “decisive actions” against alleged agents of the “Zionist regime.”
Hengaw had previously warned, from the onset of the Iran-Israel war, of the imminent risk facing these prisoners. The organization expressed grave concerns over the death sentences being issued and upheld based on coerced confessions and unfair trials—actions it described as retaliatory measures that disregard fundamental human rights principles.
These political prisoners were denied access to legal representation and family visits during their detention and were subjected to months of severe physical and psychological torture in custody. Under this duress, they were forced to make false confessions before being transferred to Urmia Central Prison after eight months.
The three men—Ali, Shojaei, and Ahmad Rasoul—were arrested by the Iranian Intelligence Ministry in July 2023 and held in its detention facility in Urmia. They were later tried in October 2023 by Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court in Urmia, presided over by Judge Ghorban Shahini. The court formally handed down their death sentences in November of that year.
The official confirmation of the sentences came nearly a year later, on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, just days after Israel’s retaliatory military strikes on Iranian bases. Judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangiri announced the verdicts without naming the individuals, claiming they were involved in both espionage and smuggling components used in the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh under the guise of alcohol trafficking.
Asghar Jahangiri stated at a press conference that at least eight individuals had been arrested in connection with the case, and three of them were sentenced to death in the initial phase of the trial.
Previously, on December 9, 2020, Hengaw reported that Iranian security forces had besieged the city of Baneh in connection with the assassination of Fakhrizadeh and arrested more than 20 people, nine of whose identities were publicly released by Hengaw at the time.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists, was assassinated on November 27, 2020, in the Absard area near Tehran. Iranian authorities blamed Israel for the killing.
