The Islamic Republic of Iran has amputated the fingers of three prisoners – Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharafian and Mehdi Shahivand – at Orumiyeh Central Prison, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned.
The punishment, which involved removing four fingers from each prisoner’s right hand with a guillotine, was carried out on the night of 30 July.
A source familiar with the matter spoke to the KHRN and said: “In recent months, Saeid Nouri, the Deputy Prosecutor of Orumiyeh for Executive Affairs, held several meetings with the three prisoners in Orumiyeh Central Prison and each time stated that they were being given a final opportunity to obtain the consent of the plaintiffs. Eventually, at 22:00 [local time] on Wednesday, 30 July 2025, the three prisoners were summoned to the prison guard’s office, where they were handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded before being taken to the execution site.”
According to the same source, “before midnight, in the presence of Peyman Khanzadeh, the prison director; Saeid Nouri, the deputy prosecutor; and several other judicial officials in the execution room, the sentence was carried out using a guillotine after a local anaesthetic was administered. After the amputation, they were transferred by ambulance to a medical centre in Orumiyeh. After a few hours of having their wounds dressed, they were returned to the prison’s admissions ward without having received full medical care.”
This latest development follows the execution of a similar sentence on 29 October 2024, when four fingers of the right hands of two imprisoned brothers from Sarpol-e Zahab, Kermanshah Province, Shahab and Mehrdad Teymouri, were amputated in Orumiyeh Central Prison.
Background
Rostami, born in 1986, Shahivand, born in 1984, and Sharafian, born in 1996, from the cities of Ilam and Khorramabad, were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department in Orumiyeh in 2015.
All three were tried in a joint case and on 19 November 2019, the Juvenile and Youth Criminal Court One sentenced them to “amputation of four fingers of the right hand from the base, ensuring that the thumb and palm remain intact” on charges of “theft”. They were also ordered to return the stolen property.
On 10 May 2020, Branch 13 of the Supreme Court, presided over by Judge Ali Shoushtari, upheld the verdict.
In April 2025, in response to the threat of imminent execution of the sentence, Hadi Rostami published an open letter from Orumiyeh Prison:
“I, Hadi Rostami, an inmate from Ilam, have been incarcerated in Orumiyeh Central Prison since 2017 on charges of ‘theft’ and sentenced to the amputation of four fingers on my right hand—despite my innocence. I have repeatedly stated that I have no knowledge of the 22 cases of theft listed in my file. However, in the detention centre of the Orumiyeh’s Criminal Investigation Department, I was subjected to severe torture and forced to sign blank papers. Even then, I continued to assert my innocence, but my voice was ignored. Now, after eight years, the Orumiyeh Prosecutor’s Office has informed me and my co-defendants, Mehdi Shahivand and Mehdi Sharafian, that if we fail to secure the plaintiffs’ consent within 30 days, our hands will be amputated. How can I obtain the consent of those I have never harmed? A consent that requires billions of tomans in compensation—an amount that neither I nor my family, who live below the poverty line, can afford. Where am I supposed to get such a sum? And now, they want to cut off my hand for a crime I did not commit. I call upon human rights organisations, the United Nations, and all international bodies to take urgent action to prevent the execution of this inhumane sentence.”
At around the same time, Amnesty International issued an urgent appeal, warning of the imminent risk of these amputations and urging the international community to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran to overturn these cruel punishments.
In its statement, Amnesty described the amputation sentences as “cruel and irreversible” and called them a “vicious spectacle”.
The organisation stated that the three prisoners had been arrested in August 2017, sentenced in 2019 following an unfair trial, and that their confessions had been extracted through torture, flogging, beatings and threats of sexual assault – confessions they later retracted in court.
Amnesty further stated that the men were denied access to legal counsel during the investigation phase, and that both the judiciary and the Supreme Court refused to investigate their torture allegations.
The organisation reported that, on 13 March 2025, the prosecutor’s office informed the three prisoners that their sentence would be carried out before 11 April 2025.
Amnesty also warned that Rostami had attempted suicide several times due to inhumane conditions and repeated threats of execution, and that all three prisoners had also gone on hunger strike to protest their situation.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, sentencing and executing amputation punishments, including hand amputation for theft, is a clear violation of human dignity and contrary to the country’s international obligations. According to Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party, no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Nonetheless, the Islamic Republic continues to use corporal punishments such as flogging, stoning, and amputation in its judicial system, having refused to ratify the UN Convention against Torture and rejected international oversight in this area.
Not only has Iran failed to stop issuing and executing amputation sentences in recent years, but according to Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Eje’i, the head of the judiciary, the highest number of such punishments were implemented in the past three years.
Speaking to students at Islamic Azad University in December 2024, Eje’i defended the practice as a “divine ruling” and proudly proclaimed its enforcement despite internal and international pressure.
This comes as the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other human rights organisations have repeatedly called for an immediate halt to such inhumane punishments.
According to figures published by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in July 2022, at least 237 people have been sentenced to amputation in Iran over the past two decades, with at least 129 of those sentences having been carried out.
