On 28 February, Shoayb Rezapour, a 30-year-old civilian from the village of Sost in Esfarayen, North Khorasan Province, was executed in public in the city, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.

Rezapour had been sentenced to death for “premeditated murder” after being convicted of fatally stabbing a man in the summer of 2022.

Bojnurd’s prosecutor told state media that the defendant had been arrested and tried “in the shortest possible time”, adding that the execution had been carried out in public at the scene of the crime on the city’s Behesht Bridge at the request of the victim’s family.

Under Islamic law, “premeditated murder” is a crime punishable by qisas, which gives the victim’s family the right to retaliate.

A day earlier, in the early hours of 27 February, four Kurdish prisoners were executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, Alborz Province.

Mostafa Hazhir-Pirouz, 40, from Asadabad, Hamadan Province, had been convicted of drug-related offences, while three others – Amir Jafarpanah from Bijar in Lorestan Province, Alireza Basatiniya, 23, from Ilam in Ilam Province, and Sajjad Eghbali from Kuhdasht in Lorestan Province – were sentenced to death for “premeditated murder.”