Mohsen Mazlum, Mohammad Faramarzi, Wafa Azarbar and Pzhman Fatehi, who were detained in Iran for 19 months, were executed this morning.

The prisoners met with their families for the first and last time on Sunday.

Then, the 4 prisoners were taken from Evin Prison to Qzalhisar Prison in Kraj and were executed.

The execution was preceded by an odyssey of torture and human rights violations. The four activists “disappeared” a year and a half ago. They were abducted by the Iranian Secret Service from the eastern Kurdish metropolis of Urmia (Ûrmiye) in July 2022. Since then, there has been no sign of life from them for a long time.

On 12 October 2022, the relatives of those abducted were horrified to see the detainees reciting “confessions” on Iranian television. The four were clearly badly marked by torture. Although the Komala organization denied that the four man had planned a bomb attack in Isfahan, that no weapons or explosives were found on them and that they had not engaged in espionage but had been politically active for the left-wing movement, they were sentenced to death without evidence.

Legal representation was not permitted in the proceedings. Every appeal was rejected and so the four men in their late 20s were executed on Monday morning.

The Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran (CFPPI) expressed deep concerns about the upcoming visit of Ms Al Nashif, the deputy of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to Iran from 3 to 5 February. Similar concerns have been echoed by various human rights advocates.

Despite the persistent daily executions and well-documented human rights violations by the Islamic regime in Iran, this visit risks inadvertently legitimizing a regime with a history of crimes against humanity, said the CFPPI.