Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani was hanged at age 24, yet not before one last visit with his family. His mother, herself serving a prison sentence, was let out of custody just long enough to say goodbye to her son and to the nephew she’d helped raise, Alireza Sepahi, who was condemned alongside him.
Iran’s judiciary had convicted the two cousins of moharebeh, or “enmity against God,” and efsad-fil-arz, or “corruption on Earth.” They were accused of arson and possession of firearms and Molotov cocktails in connection with the deaths of four security officers during widespread protests on January 8, 2026.
Mr. Badjani was hanged in public in Isfahan’s Alikhani Square alongside Amirhossein Safari, 27, before dawn, under heavy security, as onlookers who had gathered overnight chanted against the executioners.
Alireza Sepahi had been set to hang beside them. But he suffered a heart attack en route to the execution site and was resuscitated at Al-Zahra Hospital before being sent back to Dastgerd Prison.
The reprieve didn’t hold. His lawyer said the Supreme Court approved a retrial this month, but a parallel Revolutionary Court branch rejected it without a hearing and sent the case to the sentence-enforcement branch — putting him back on track for execution.
These deaths are far from isolated. Nine days earlier, two other defendants in the same case, Erfan Esfandiari and Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, were hanged in public, and at least 60 more people convicted in connection with January’s uprising are now living under a death sentence that could be carried out without warning.
This is part of what monitors call a new, darker phase of the crackdown. How many more names will cross President Trump’s Truth Social feed before Washington moves past the repost?
