Independent human-rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council have called on Iran to stop executions immediately, commute all death sentences and review cases against fair-trial standards. Their statement, issued in Geneva on 9 October, is an assessment by the experts in their individual capacities; it is not a court judgment or a finding adopted by the United Nations as a whole.
The experts urged a moratorium as a first step towards abolition. They said the cases brought to their attention raised allegations of serious procedural violations, including torture, enforced disappearance, sexual violence, coerced confessions and restrictions on access to lawyers of a person’s choosing, particularly during investigations. These are allegations reported by the experts, not findings established by a court in this statement.
Concerns about protest-related cases
The call covers people arrested in connection with protests in January 2026. The experts said none of those arrested over the protests should be executed, regardless of the accusations. They referred to a separate fact-finding mission on Iran’s earlier conclusion that security forces’ conduct in the crackdown amounted to crimes against humanity. That conclusion concerns the crackdown; it does not itself decide the guilt or innocence of any person now facing a death sentence.
The distinction matters because a demand for a fair review is not the same as a claim that every prosecution has the same facts or procedural history. The experts’ position is that the alleged violations they have encountered are grave enough to make execution unacceptable in those cases. Their statement does not name individual defendants or provide case files, so it cannot serve as a substitute for case-by-case examination of charges, evidence, representation and appeals.
Executions extend beyond security cases
The experts also placed protest-related cases within a wider account of capital punishment in Iran. They said most executions are for homicide under qisas, a system of retribution, or for drug-related offences. Under qisas, they said, a victim’s family can have a decisive role in whether retribution is carried out or blood money is accepted. The ability to pay can therefore affect whether a person lives, the experts warned.
They raised concerns that women unable to afford blood money may be executed for killing abusive husbands, sometimes after child marriage and years of violence. They also argued that people executed for drug offences appear largely to be low-level couriers, including people from marginalised ethnic minorities, rather than leaders of the trade. These characterisations are the experts’ assessment and should not be read as independently verified descriptions of every case.
The statement further notes that Iranian law retains the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts and certain religious offences, including apostasy. The experts said the existence of such laws can constrain people’s ability to live openly or to hold, change or leave a religion or belief, regardless of how frequently those provisions are used.
What the experts are asking for
The recommendations are immediate: halt executions, establish a moratorium, commute existing death sentences and review each case against fair-trial standards. A moratorium would suspend executions; it would not by itself abolish the death penalty or resolve the underlying legal cases. Commutation would change a sentence, while review would examine whether proceedings met applicable safeguards.
The experts argued that executions do not end dissent and called for a move away from what they described as arbitrary use of the death penalty. The statement does not report that Iranian authorities have accepted the recommendations or changed policy. Its central significance is the breadth of the appeal: it addresses protest prosecutions, ordinary criminal offences and laws affecting religious belief and sexual orientation, while insisting that allegations of coercion and unfair proceedings require scrutiny before any irreversible punishment is carried out.
