The line sounds choppy. But Mehrab Abdollahzadeh's voice is clear and, given the circumstances, surprisingly firm.

He is on death row in western Iran. He speaks quickly, as if time is running out. And its message is desperate.

“They are listening to my voice from the Oromiyeh central prison, and this may be the last time they hear it,” he says in a voice note obtained by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

"From the first day of my arrest, I was forced to confess through torture and threats, completely false confessions. None of the charges against me are true. They know it, and God knows it. I am innocent."

Mehrab was arrested in 2022, during national protests that followed the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for not wearing the headscarf properly. He was accused of participating in the murder of a member of Iran's Basij militia.

After 42 months of fear and sleepless nights, he was executed earlier this month, within the framework of a rapid increase in executions of people accused of political and security crimes.

Since the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, the UN claims to have verified the execution of at least 32 political prisoners.

This represents a sharp year-on-year increase, with 45 executions on politically motivated charges throughout 2025, according to Amnesty International.

Executions to silence

The UN Human Rights Office has warned that the death penalty is increasingly being used to silence political dissent.

Several of those executed this year were accused of spying for Israel or the CIA, while others were accused of belonging to an opposition group in exile. Fourteen of them were arrested in connection with the uprising in January this year, which was suppressed with lethal force causing thousands of deaths.

"In Iran, the authorities execute those sentenced to death by hanging. They execute them at dawn," says Nassim Papayianni of Amnesty International. “The Iranian population wakes up almost daily to announcements of executions.”

“They use the death penalty as a weapon of political repression, to instill fear in the population and, in essence, crush and suffocate any dissent.”

Although some executions are announced publicly, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office told the BBC they are concerned that others are being carried out in secret.

Last year, Iran carried out 2,159 executions, according to Amnesty International, the highest number since 1989. The organization says the vast majority were for drug crimes or murder.

The UN fears this year's figure will be even higher.

With the increased use of the death penalty, the regime is trying to regain its authority after the damage suffered by the January uprising and the war, according to Kaveh Kermanshahi of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

“At a time when it is facing multiple internal and external crises, it is trying, through intensified repression and increased executions, to make a show of power and project the message: 'I am still here and I am still in control of the situation,'” he says.

Late last month, state television aired a report on the execution of Sasan Azadvar, a 21-year-old karate champion from the central city of Isfahan.

He had been convicted of “moharabeh” or “declaring war on God” and “effective collaboration with the enemy” for attacking police forces during the January protests. He is seen confessing to having used a stick to break the window of a patrol car and asking for gasoline to set it on fire.

However, he was not charged with any blood crime, which, under international law, constitutes the legal threshold for the application of the death penalty.

Disturbing patterns

Iranian authorities did not respond to the BBC's request for comment on the increased use of the death penalty, including against Sardar Azadvar, or on allegations of torture.

However, on April 30, the head of Iran's judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, dismissed international criticism of the death sentences linked to the January unrest, saying his courts would not be swayed.

Each of the condemned has his own story. But human rights activists speak of disturbing patterns. The death penalty is applied disproportionately against members of the country's minorities.

Erfan Shakourzadeh, a 29-year-old master's student in aerospace engineering, was hanged on May 11. The Iranian judiciary declared that he had been convicted of sharing classified information with Israeli and American intelligence services.

But Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw published a note they say he wrote before his death.

"I was arrested on fabricated espionage charges and, after eight and a half months of torture and isolation, I was forced to falsely confess. Don't let another innocent life be taken silently."

Hengaw expressed deep concern about the speed with which trials, sentencings and executions are carried out, as well as the “complete lack of transparency” in judicial proceedings.

“The Islamic Republic continues its systematic repression of the population by arbitrarily accusing dissidents and critics of being ‘Israeli spies’ without presenting credible evidence or guaranteeing a fair trial,” Aywar Shekhi of the Hengaw organization told the BBC, adding that “many lives are in danger.”

In his voice message from prison before his execution, Mehrab Abdollahzadeh described the torment of being on death row.

"A person sentenced to death thinks day and night that at any moment he could be called and taken to execution. He only finds a brief respite after one in the morning, perhaps putting aside his racing thoughts to sleep for two or three hours," he said.

The 29-year-old Kurdish merchant was executed – according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network – without prior notice to his relatives or lawyers, and his body has not yet been handed over to his family.