UN Condemns Iran Execution Spree, Worried about Minorities

The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned an alleged spree of 28 executions in Iran. (Reuters)
The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned an alleged spree of 28 executions in Iran. (Reuters)
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UN Condemns Iran Execution Spree, Worried about Minorities

The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned an alleged spree of 28 executions in Iran. (Reuters)
The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned an alleged spree of 28 executions in Iran. (Reuters)

The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned an alleged spree of 28 executions in Iran, including several prisoners from minority groups, and called on Tehran to halt the hanging of an ethnic Baluchi man.

Iran has often faced criticism from world bodies and Western human rights group for its rights record and high number of executions - the world's highest after China, according to Amnesty International. Tehran has dismissed the criticism as baseless and due to a lack of understanding of its religious laws.

"#Iran: We strongly condemn the series of executions – at least 28 – since mid-December, including of people from minority groups," the UN human rights office said on Twitter.

"We urge the authorities to halt the imminent execution of Javid Dehghan, to review his and other death penalty cases in line with human rights law," it added.

There was no immediate official Iranian reaction to the UN statement on Friday, the weekend in the country.

Dehghan was sentenced to death after being convicted "following a grossly unfair trial" of belonging to an armed group and involvement in an ambush that killed two Revolutionary Guards, Amnesty International said.

"The court relied on torture-tainted 'confessions' and ignored the serious due process abuses committed by Revolutionary Guards agents and prosecution authorities during the investigation process," Amnesty said.

Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province borders on Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of opium, and Pakistan. The area has long been plagued by unrest from drug smuggling gangs and separatist militants.

On Thursday, state media said an Iranian member of ISIS was executed in southwestern Khuzestan province, home to many of Iran's ethnic Arabs, for taking part in an attack that killed two paramilitary Basij militiamen.



Ukraine Says Starlink’s Global Outage Hit Its Military Communications 

A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)
A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)
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Ukraine Says Starlink’s Global Outage Hit Its Military Communications 

A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)
A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)

Starlink systems used by Ukrainian military units were down for two and a half hours overnight, a senior commander said, part of a global issue that disrupted the satellite internet provider.

Ukraine's forces are heavily reliant on thousands of SpaceX's Starlink terminals for battlefield communications and some drone operations, as they have proved resistant to espionage and signal jamming throughout the three and a half years of fighting Russia's invasion.

Starlink experienced one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline.

"Starlink is down across the entire front," Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine's drone forces, wrote on Telegram at 10:41 p.m. (1941 GMT) on Thursday.

He updated his post later to say that by about 1:05 a.m. on Friday the issue had been resolved. He said the incident had highlighted the risk of reliance on the systems, and called for communication and connectivity methods to be diversified.

"Combat missions were performed without a (video) feed, battlefield reconnaissance was done with strike (drones)," Brovdi wrote.

Oleksandr Dmitriev, the founder of OCHI, a Ukrainian system that centralizes feeds from thousands of drone crews across the frontline, told Reuters the outage showed that relying on cloud services to command units and relay battlefield drone reconnaissance was a "huge risk".

"If connection to the internet is lost ... the ability to conduct combat operations is practically gone," he said, calling for a move towards local communication systems that are not reliant on the internet.

Although Starlink does not operate in Russia, Ukrainian officials have said that Moscow's troops are also widely using the systems on the frontlines in Ukraine.