Thirty-eight years after Iran’s mass execution of political prisoners, the gallows are still being used for the same political purpose: to intimidate a population that challenges the Islamic Republic.

On Sunday, Iran executed Shahram Sadeghi in Karaj. He had been convicted of deliberately driving into police officers during the January 2026 anti-government protests. Iran’s judiciary said the Supreme Court had upheld his death sentence.

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His execution is not simply another case in Iran’s long record of capital punishment. It comes as the country marks the 38th anniversary of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners, when thousands were summarily executed after secret proceedings.

The Iranian opposition has documented the number of victims at more than 30,000, most of them members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

But the significance of 1988 is not only the scale of the killings. It is the fact that the perpetrators were never held accountable.

In July 2024, Professor Javaid Rehman, then the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, published his final report on the atrocities. He concluded that the 1988 killings amounted to crimes against humanity, including murder and........

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