Iran’s ongoing murder of dissidents had an especially heartless episode on Monday, as 25-year-old protester Alireza Sepahi was hanged at dawn just hours after marrying his imprisoned fiancee Mahshad Keshani, 22, in a jailhouse phone call.
Sepahi and Keshani were both arrested during the regime’s brutal crackdown on protests in January, although Oslo-based nonprofit Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) said they “knew and loved each other” before the demonstrations.
IHRNGO said a total of 62 people were arrested for the protest in Alikhani Square in Isfahan on January 8, during which the regime claimed four policemen were killed. Twelve of the prisoners were sentenced to death and five had been executed by the time Sepahi was marched to the gallows at Isfahan Central Prison along with fellow inmate Alireza Raisi Hassan Hendouyi.
The Iranian regime has officially executed a total of 34 protesters to date for the demonstrations held in December 2026 and January 2026. Thousands more were gunned down in the streets by thugs working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization.
IHRNGO has documented “the use of physical, sexual, and psychological torture to extract self-incriminating confessions from the defendants in the case,” and Sepahi’s execution had to be rescheduled from its original July 28 date because he suffered a heart attack, despite his youth and health at the time of his arrest.
Sepahi was moved into “pre-execution solitary confinement” on September 12 after one of Iran’s “revolutionary courts” rejected his last appeal. On October 4, he married Keshani over the phone. Both the bride and the groom’s mother, Somayeh Afshar, are serving five-year prison sentences after they were arbitrarily arrested in January.
According to human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi, the long-distance wedding was Keshani’s idea. Davoudi said he read the vows for the ceremony and he has published a recording of it. He said the bride’s family provided a dowry that included “a copy of the Quran, a saffron rock candy, and a single red rose.” The groom was hanged a few hours after the wedding.
Davoudi recalled telling Keshani, “My dear, you understand that this cannot simply be undone?” He said she replied, “Mr. Davoudi, I love Alireza.”
Davoudi said Sepahi wept when told of his fiancée’s plan to get married before he was executed.
“Alireza was crying, and something deeply painful and beautiful happened. Even the prison officers began to cry,” he said.
“Even now, I wonder how one young woman can possess such courage,” the lawyer said of the bride, as quoted by Fox News.
“The lawyers hoped perhaps that the marriage could delay the execution. But the authorities claimed the fiancée was not related to the prisoner and prevented an in-person ceremony,” said Roya Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABC).
“They were married but in absentia. There has been a legal act but it did not happen inside the prison in the presence of the two individuals,” she said.
As a final indignity, the regime refused to give Sepahi’s remains back to his family for burial in Isfahan, but instead shipped him to the city of Kashan, about 125 miles away.
“The weekly executions of protesters continue, while hundreds more have been sentenced to death or face charges carrying the death penalty. This is a continuation of the mass killing of January protesters — first on the streets, now through executions,” said IHRNGO director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
“An immediate halt to all executions must be a central demand of every government maintaining diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic,” Amiry-Moghaddam urged.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center published a joint report in September that condemned Iran’s execution spree against protesters as “unlawful,” marked by “grossly unfair and summary proceedings” during which confessions are obtained through torture, evidence for the defense is disregarded, and procedures are cut short to obtain fast convictions.
“Day after day, Iran’s authorities are sending protesters, including teenagers, to the gallows based on torture-tainted ‘confessions’ and following grossly unfair proceedings that are too short to establish a defendant’s guilt even for a minor offense, let alone for capital charges,” HRW researcher Bahar Saba said when the report was published.
“The authorities’ message is clearly that protests will be met with brutality, whether through bullets on the streets or public executions following sham trials,” Saba said.
Davoudi told The Times of London that he hoped the story of Sepahi and Keshani’s doomed wedding, and the regime’s callous indifference, could inspire more international pressure against Tehran to halt its executions.
“I hope love will defeat that cursed rope. I will lose my faith in God if they execute this young man tonight,” he said, right before the Islamic Republic of Iran did exactly that.