During the crackdown on the protests of December 2025–January 2026 and the judicial handling of political and national-security cases, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary, called on judicial officials to expedite proceedings, issue judgments and enforce sentences. The country’s highest judicial authority’s emphasis on accelerating proceedings in cases that may result in the deprivation of life raises serious concerns that speed and security considerations are being prioritised over independent investigations, the effective exercise of defence rights and the guarantees of a fair trial.

Tehran Prosecutor stated that cases relating to the 12-day war, the protests of Dey 1404 and arrests carried out during the recent conflict had been processed, on the instructions of senior judicial officials, with “precision and speed,” and that some had resulted in the issuance and enforcement of death sentences and other final judgments. Despite this official acknowledgment, he provided no figures concerning the number of people executed or sentenced to death, their identities, the charges brought against them, the evidence used to establish guilt, or the extent to which their defence rights had been respected.

In these circumstances, the individual documentation of each death-row case is a matter of urgency. These cases should not be viewed merely as isolated incidents; they may reflect a broader pattern involving the use of vague national-security charges, reliance on confessions obtained under coercion, denial of access to lawyers of the defendants’ own choosing, closed or televised trials, disregard for evidentiary contradictions and the absence of independent evidence, and the use of the death penalty to suppress dissent and instil fear in society.