Iran hangs two men over killing of four police in January protests

Two men hanged in Isfahan

Iranian authorities hanged two men on Tuesday, 3 November, for their part in the killing of four police officers in Isfahan, a city in central Iran, during the January protests. The judiciary-linked Mizan agency said appeals lodged by the two men had been rejected. It named them as Amirhossein Maleqi and Amirhossein Ebrahimi and said the sentences were carried out after the Supreme Court upheld the verdicts of the lower court. According to the judiciary, the men were armed at the scene and had committed several offences against national security, and it described them as the main perpetrators of the crime.

A second pair in the same case

Two other men convicted in the same case were executed in early October. The killings of the four officers are dated to 8 January 2026, which places them at the height of the unrest. The case has now produced two pairs of executions, with the most recent hangings carried out on 3 November. Many executions in Iran are linked to the winter protests, and the Isfahan case is one of them.

Protests and the disputed death toll

Protests began in late December 2025 over economic hardship, rising living costs and the devaluation of the Iranian currency. They grew into mass demonstrations against the government in Tehran and peaked on 8 and 9 January 2026. Iranian authorities said more than 3,000 people died and blamed the violence on terrorist acts organised by the United States and Israel. Human rights organisations abroad describe a state crackdown that killed thousands, and the two accounts remain far apart. At least 37 executions linked to the mass protests had been recorded by 3 November.

Executions across the country

Executions in Iran have risen since the war in the Middle East began on 28 February 2026, after United States and Israeli strikes on Tehran. Many of them are linked to the protests that began in December. Organisations such as Amnesty International say Iran has the second-highest number of executions in the world, behind China. The main dates in the case and the wider unrest are set out in the timeline below.