Iran Executes Three Men Convicted Over January Protests in Karaj

Iran executed three men on Sunday morning, November 8, after the Supreme Court upheld their death sentences, according to the Iranian judiciary. The three were Hassan Divband, whose name is also rendered Dioband in some reporting, Hamid Kazemi and Reza Zanganeh. The judiciary said the case grew out of the anti-government protests that peaked in Karaj, west of Tehran, on January 8 and 9 this year.

The judiciary said the three men were convicted of carrying out operational activities on behalf of Israel, the United States and hostile groups during the January protests. Those are the judiciary's claims, stated by state media and the judiciary's own outlets. The judiciary accused the men of throwing Molotov cocktails and grenades, using bladed weapons and firearms, setting fire to public facilities, and damaging an electricity substation in Karaj in attacks that caused power outages.

The case

According to the judiciary, Divband was arrested on January 11, after investigations identified him as a suspect in attacks on public property and in incitement to violence. The wider case had 11 defendants in total. The three men executed on Sunday were sentenced to death, and the courts also ordered their assets confiscated. The judiciary's news agency reporting, carried by the human rights news agency HRANA, said the confiscation process is ongoing. The other defendants in the case received prison terms of 5 to 10 years, according to Reuters reporting carried by BusinessDay.

The executions were announced through Mizan, the judiciary's news agency, and through state media including Press TV, which cited the Alborz judiciary media centre. The BBC reported the executions on Sunday, citing Tasnim and Reuters, and BusinessDay carried Reuters reporting of the same announcement. HRANA, which tracks cases through the Iranian courts, also reported the three executions and named the same three men.

The January unrest

The case reaches back to the unrest of January 2026. Iranian authorities reported more than 3,000 deaths during the January unrest, and officials blamed the violence on activities they described as supported by Israel and the United States. That is the official account given by the authorities. The protests of January 8 and 9 in Karaj sit at the centre of the prosecution case against all 11 defendants.

Sunday's executions are the latest step in the courts' handling of cases from those two days. The judiciary presented the three men as armed rioters acting for foreign states. No independent account of the three men's actions was published with the announcement, and the reporting carried by international outlets rests on the judiciary's own statements through Mizan, Tasnim and state media. What is confirmed across the BBC, Reuters, Press TV and HRANA is the fact of the executions, the names of the three men, the charges the judiciary said they were convicted of, and the prison terms given to the other defendants in the same case.