Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 2 November 2026: Mahan Vafadar, a man on death row for a murder he was alleged to have committed at 17, was secretly executed in Dezful Prison. He is the third child offender execution recorded in 2026.
According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Dezful Prison on 19 August 2026. His identity has been established as Mahan Vafadar who worked in a cattle farm prior to his arrest.
IHRNGO has verified that Mahan was just 17 years old when he is alleged to have killed another man in self-defence on 10 September 2020. He was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) by the Criminal Court.
At the time of writing, his execution has not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.
Iran is one of the few countries in the world that still carries out the death penalty for crimes committed under the age of 18. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which the Islamic Republic is a signatory to, prohibits the issuance and implementation of the death penalty for crimes committed by an individual below 18 years of age.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Islamic Republic is also a signatory to, explicitly states that “Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age.” However, the new Islamic Penal Code adopted in 2013 explicitly defines the “age of criminal responsibility” for children as the age of maturity under Sharia law, meaning that girls over 9 lunar years of age and boys over 15 lunar years of age are eligible for execution if convicted of “crimes against God” (such as apostasy) or “retribution crimes”(such as murder).
Those charged with the umbrella term of “intentional murder” are sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) regardless of intent or mitigating factors due to a lack of grading in law. Once a defendant has been convicted, the victim’s family are required to choose between death as retribution, diya (blood money) or forgiveness.
Crucially, while an indicative diya amount is set by the Judiciary every year, there is no legal limit to how much can be demanded by families of the victims. IHRNGO has recorded many cases where defendants are executed because they cannot afford to pay the blood money. Should the victim’s family choose execution, they are not only encouraged to attend, but also to physically carry out the execution themselves.
According to IHRNGO’s 2025 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 747 people including 48 women, were executed for murder charges, the highest number of qisas executions since 2010. Under 7% of the recorded qisas executions were announced by official sources. In 2025, IHRNGO also recorded 566 cases of families choosing diya or forgiveness instead of qisas executions. In the first nine months of 2026, at least 306 people were executed for murder charges.