Six Iranian men stood in the courtyard of Ghezel Hesar prison, sang a resistance anthem, and faced the gallows. Smuggled video captured the moment, and their defiance, before the regime hanged them over a span of roughly ten days in late March and early April.
The footage, reported by The US Sun, shows the condemned men awaiting execution on charges including armed rebellion, membership in an outlawed organization, "waging war against God," and "corruption on Earth." All six were killed. Their names, ages, and stories have now emerged, and they tell a grim tale about a regime that answers protest with the noose.
The men were not anonymous. They were fathers, engineers, lawyers, and lifelong dissidents. And several of them left behind their own smuggled messages, recorded on phones hidden inside prison cells, addressed not to sympathizers abroad but directly to the Supreme Leader whose government was about to kill them.
Ali Akbar Daneshvarkar, a 57-year-old civil engineer and father, was hanged on March 25. He had spent more than two years in prison and was subjected to torture and interrogation at Tehran's notorious Evin prison. Mohammad Taghavi, 66, a political dissident, was executed the same day. From Fashafouyeh Prison, Taghavi had written a letter dated August 7, 2025, that left no room for ambiguity about his resolve.
"I will not bargain with anyone over my life. I swear to fight valiantly until my last breath and to die standing, and to the last step."
He kept that promise.
On March 31, the regime executed Pouya Ghobadi, a 33-year-old electrical engineer from Sonqor in western Iran. He had been accused of armed rebellion and membership in an outlawed organization. He was tortured before he was killed. That same day, Babak Alipour, a 34-year-old law graduate, was also hanged. He had spent three years on death row.
Two weeks before his execution, Alipour recorded a short video on a phone smuggled into his cell. He spoke directly about the man whose government was about to end his life.
"Dictators have come, been overthrown, died, and been killed, and now it is the turn of Khamenei-the-son's dictatorship."
On April 4, Vahid Baniamerian was executed. Abolhassan Montazer, a former political prisoner who had already served 11 years behind bars under the Shah before being imprisoned again under the current regime, was hanged the same day. Baniamerian, like Ghobadi, faced charges of armed rebellion.
Before he died, Baniamerian recorded a message aimed squarely at Iran's leadership.
"To the Supreme Leader who wants to execute us to create fear in society. I want to remind you that I and those like me rose from the blood of freedom-loving youth."
He continued: "It is time for the world to correct the failed and disruptive policies of the past decades, policies which have only fuelled massacre and devastation in Iran. How much more suffering must there be before the world moves beyond words of concern to decisive action?"
The smuggled courtyard video is not just a record of individual courage. It captures all six men singing together, a collective act of defiance in a place designed to produce fear and silence. The New York Post reported lyrics from the resistance anthem the men sang.
"Your rival stands before you now, hardened in the flame, I am the faith, I am revolt, with belief I take my stand, I've sworn an oath upon my blood, the tyrant's throne shall shatter."
The six men were accused of ties to the opposition PMOI/MEK, the New York Post reported. Human rights groups say Iran intensified capital punishment after January demonstrations, with at least 30 protesters sentenced to death and at least 145 hangings reported since February 28.
The broader execution numbers are staggering. Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, a figure that averages four people a day. That represents a 68 percent increase over the 975 people put to death in 2024, according to a report by two human rights charities. And at the start of the year, Iran's security forces reportedly killed tens of thousands during protests following the death of the Supreme Leader.
The charges leveled against the condemned men, "waging war against God," "corruption on Earth", are not legal terms in any system that respects due process. They are instruments of state terror dressed in religious language, wielded by a regime that stands accused of sexually abusing detained protesters and systematically eliminating dissent.
The executions of the six men took place against a backdrop of broader diplomatic tension. President Trump announced on Truth Social that Iran would no longer execute Bita Hemmati and seven other female protesters after he intervened to demand their release. Hemmati had been set to become the first woman hanged in connection with the recent demonstrations.
"I have just been informed that the eight women protestors who were going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed. Four will be released immediately, and four will be sentenced to one month in prison."
Trump described the development as "Very good news!" In a separate post, he said he had cancelled a planned trip by U.S. representatives to Islamabad, Pakistan, where they were to meet with Iranian negotiators.
"Too much time wasted on travelling, too much work! Beside which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their 'leadership.' Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!"
The cancellation of talks and the intervention on the women's cases reflect a posture that treats Iranian leadership as a regime that responds to pressure, not persuasion. Whether that approach yields broader results remains an open question. But the six men in the courtyard of Ghezel Hesar prison did not have the benefit of outside leverage. They had only their voices.
Iran's execution wave is not an accident of policy or an overcorrection by local officials. It is deliberate. The charges, the pace, the targeting of protesters, all of it points to a system that uses the gallows as a political tool. The regime has executed teenage protesters and shows no sign of slowing down.
The smuggled videos from inside Iranian prisons are a reminder that totalitarian states work hardest to control what the world sees. The footage from Ghezel Hesar was never meant to reach the outside. Someone risked severe punishment to record it and get it out. That act, and the singing it captured, matters precisely because the regime tried to ensure it would never be seen.
For years, Western governments and international bodies have issued statements of "concern" about Iran's human rights record. Baniamerian, in his final message, asked a pointed question: "How much more suffering must there be before the world moves beyond words of concern to decisive action?" The question was directed at the world. But it should land hardest on those governments and institutions that have spent decades treating the Iranian regime as a negotiating partner rather than what its own conduct reveals it to be.
The U.S. Justice Department has worked to dismantle Iranian cyber propaganda networks targeting Americans, and the State Department has sanctioned officials in other authoritarian regimes over alleged torture. But sanctions and statements have not stopped Iran from hanging engineers, lawyers, and 66-year-old dissidents at a rate of four a day.
Six men sang in a prison courtyard because they knew what was coming and chose defiance over silence. The regime that killed them would prefer the world never heard a note. That alone tells you everything about who deserves the benefit of the doubt, and who does not.
