Mashhad Court Sentences Protesters to Death

A moharebeh sentence from a revolutionary court is the judgment these reports describe, and it is not a notice that the three have been executed. The accounts do not say an appeal has been filed. Until a higher court acts, or the sentence is carried out, the file is a death judgment sitting in Vakilabad Prison.

A revolutionary court in Mashhad has sentenced three people arrested during Iran's January protests to death on a charge of moharebeh, or enmity against God. One of them is Abolfazl Sedaghat, 20.

Sources familiar with the case said Branch 5 of the Mashhad Revolutionary Court, Judge Hossein Yazdankhah presiding, imposed Sedaghat's sentence and did not let him use a lawyer of his own choosing. They said he was the third defendant in a joint case with Matin Farnian, 23, a Mashhad resident, and Vahid Khedrikhah. The three were arrested in the city on Jan. 18 and 19, during nationwide protests that had spread out of Tehran in the last days of 2025, and they are being held in separate wards at Vakilabad Prison.

Human rights researchers had already reported the three death sentences and Farnian's name. They were still confirming the other two identities when Sedaghat's name was added to the public account. The reports available this week do not say an appeal has been filed. They also do not say that any of the three has been executed.

Moharebeh is the capital charge the court used. On Nov. 8, Iran's judiciary said Hassan Divband, Hamid Kazemi, and Reza Zanganeh, who had been arrested during the January protests in Karaj, had been executed. That announcement is a different case. It does not say the Mashhad sentences have been carried out. Sedaghat, Farnian, and Khedrikhah remain in Vakilabad under the death sentences the court imposed.

All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.