KARAJ — Iranian authorities hanged Babak Alipour, a 34-year-old law graduate, at Ghezel Hesar prison near Karaj on 31 March. Pouya Ghobadi, a 32-year-old electrical engineer, was hanged at the same facility on the same day.

Alipour, who was from Amol, a city 75 miles north-east of Tehran, had been on death row for three years. He and Ghobadi had been accused of being members of an armed rebellion and of the People's Mujahedin of Iran. Ghezel Hesar prison is located west of Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj, a city in northern Iran.

Before his execution, Alipour wrote a letter from his cell at Rajai Shahr prison stating that he was not intimidated. On 12 March, he made a short video on a phone smuggled into the prison. "Dictators have come, been overthrown, died, and been killed, and now it is the turn of Khamenei-the-son's dictatorship," Alipour said. In a final video filmed in jail, he said, "Without a doubt, the day of freedom and happiness for the heroic people of the blasphemous mullahs will come soon."

By 12 March, Alipour's brother Roozbeh, sister Maryam, and mother Ommolbanin Dehghan had been arrested while returning home from a vigil outside Rajai Shahr prison. Alipour's father, a farmer whose former clothing business closed due to economic conditions, has not been able to recover his son's remains. Roozbeh has not been heard from for one month.

Sixteen men have been hanged in Iran in the last month; eight were political prisoners and eight were protesters. Executions in Iran paused briefly when the US-Israel conflict began on 28 February and resumed after 18 March. Amirhossein Hatami, 18, was hanged on 2 April after authorities said he had confessed to charges of moharebeh and efsad-fil-arz related to alleged involvement in an attack on a Revolutionary Guard Corps base in Tehran during the January protests. Amirali Mirjafari, 24, a student and computer technician, was hanged for alleged involvement in the protests. Eleven political prisoners remain on death row in Iran, with ages ranging from 23 to 68, according to human rights activists.

"Normally, most of the those who are executed are for criminal charges: drugs, murder, mainly." said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights. "The aim of these executions is to create fear among people. The political cost of execution of a protester or political prisoner is much higher in normal times. However, now, everything is overshadowed by the war."

Reza Younesi, a professor in the chemistry department of Uppsala University in Sweden, said his father Yousef and brother Ali are serving custodial sentences in Iran for alleged links to the People's Mujahedin of Iran. Yousef Younesi was missing within the Iranian prison system for nine days before calling his mother. "We had no idea for exactly nine days but yesterday he called my mum and he has been transferred to the same prison where my brother is now," Younesi said. "When there is a war, of course, they become even more brutal. So they can do more or less anything to prisoners, as they know that the international society, international human rights organisation, they cannot do much, and even if they say anything, no one pays attention." He added: "If some of the top leaders are killed, the system is still alive and will not collapse. So the threat for them is people inside the country. They are using this penalty and executions as a tool to spread fear in society."