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Iranian Authorities Execute Kurdish Man after 15 Years in Prison

Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
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Iranian Authorities Execute Kurdish Man after 15 Years in Prison

Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

Iranian authorities on Thursday executed Kurdish man Kamran Sheikheh, the last surviving defendant in a case linked to a cleric's killing in 2008, rights groups said.
Sheikheh, charged of “corruption on Earth,” was put to death in Urmia prison in northwestern Iran, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in separate statements.
He was arrested in 2009 and was sentenced to death with six other prisoners by a branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh.
Sheikheh's six co-defendants had all been executed in separate hangings between November 2023 and May 2024.
Amnesty International has said they had been sentenced to death “in a grossly unfair trial” that had been “marred by allegations of torture and other ill-treatment,” according to AFP.
IHR described Sheikheh as a “political prisoner” who had been sentenced to death “based on torture-tainted confessions in a grossly unfair trial.”
The execution “was unlawful according to international law and the Islamic republic's own laws, amounting to an extrajudicial killing,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
HRANA said that the proceedings related to the killing of an imam of a mosque in the northwestern city of Mahabad in September 2008.
Sheikheh and the six others were arrested in connection with the killing in January and February 2010 and sentenced to death in 2018.
Activists say that Iran's use of the death penalty disproportionately targets members of the Kurdish, Arab and Baluch ethnic minorities in western and southeast Iran.
In one of the latest cases, rights groups said the Revolutionary Court of Tehran had sentenced Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish woman held in the capital's Evin prison, to death on charges of “rebellion.”
Earlier this month, Iranian authorities sentenced to death another Kurdish woman, Sharifeh Mohammadi, on the same charges over accusations of links to an outlawed Kurdish organization.
IHR warned that Sheikheh's execution is part of a new surge in hangings in Iran marking the end of an apparent lull coinciding with snap presidential elections several weeks ago.
The rights group said at least 20 people have been executed since Saturday.
Iran executed 853 people in 2023, the highest number recorded since 2015, representing a 48% increase from 2022 in the wake of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
The spike in death penalties has continued into 2024, with at least 95 recorded executions by March 20, according to Amnesty International.

 

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World

Trump Moves to Block Courts from Seizing Venezuelan Oil Revenue in US Accounts

The sun rises in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, a week after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP)
The sun rises in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, a week after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP)
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Trump Moves to Block Courts from Seizing Venezuelan Oil Revenue in US Accounts

The sun rises in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, a week after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP)
The sun rises in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, a week after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP)

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at blocking courts or creditors from impounding revenue tied to the sale of Venezuelan oil held in US Treasury accounts, the White House said on Saturday.

The emergency order said the revenue, held in foreign government deposit funds, should be used in Venezuela to help create "peace, prosperity and stability."

The order was signed on ‌Friday, less ‌than a week after US ‌forces ⁠captured Venezuelan leader ‌Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. Several companies have longstanding claims against the country. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, for example, left Venezuela nearly 20 years ago after their assets were nationalized. Both are still owed billions of dollars.

The order does not mention any ⁠specific company. It declares that the money is the sovereign ‌property of Venezuela held in US ‍custody for governmental and ‍diplomatic purposes and is not subject to private ‍claims.

"President Trump is preventing the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela," the White House said in a fact sheet.

A US agreement with Venezuela's interim leaders would provide ⁠up to the US, where numerous refineries are specially equipped to refine it.

Trump cited the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the 1976 National Emergencies Act as a legal justification.

Trump signed the order the same day he met in Washington with executives from Exxon, Conoco, Chevron and other oil companies as part of a bid to encourage them to invest $100 billion in Venezuela's oil ‌industry.

World

As Protests Rage, Iran Pulls the Plug on Contact with the World

This frame grab from a video released Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, by Iranian state television shows a man holding a device to document burning vehicles during a night of mass protests in Zanjan, Iran. (Iranian state TV via AP)
This frame grab from a video released Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, by Iranian state television shows a man holding a device to document burning vehicles during a night of mass protests in Zanjan, Iran. (Iranian state TV via AP)
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As Protests Rage, Iran Pulls the Plug on Contact with the World

This frame grab from a video released Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, by Iranian state television shows a man holding a device to document burning vehicles during a night of mass protests in Zanjan, Iran. (Iranian state TV via AP)
This frame grab from a video released Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, by Iranian state television shows a man holding a device to document burning vehicles during a night of mass protests in Zanjan, Iran. (Iranian state TV via AP)

Just after 8 p.m. Thursday, Iran's theocracy pulled the plug and disconnected the country's 85 million people from the rest of the world.

Following a playbook used both in demonstrations and in war, Iran severed the internet connections and telephone lines that connect its people to the vast diaspora in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Until now, even while facing strict sanctions over the country's nuclear program, Iranians still could access mobile phone apps and even websites blocked by the theocracy, using virtual private networks to circumvent restrictions.

Thursday's decision sharply limits people from sharing images and witness accounts of the nationwide protests over Iran's ailing economy that have grown to pose the biggest challenge to the government in years. It also could provide cover for a violent crackdown after the Trump administration warned Iran's government about consequences for further deaths among demonstrators.

As the country effectively goes dark, loved ones abroad are frantic for any scrap of news, especially as Iran’s attorney general warned on Saturday that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death-penalty charge

“You can’t understand our feelings. My brothers, my cousins, they will go on the street. You can’t imagine the anxiety of the Iranian diaspora,” said Azam Jangravi, a cybersecurity expert in Toronto who opposes Iran's government. “I couldn’t work yesterday. I had meetings but I postponed them because I couldn’t focus. I was thinking of my family and friends.”

Her voice cracked as she added: “A lot of people are being killing and injured by Iran, and we don’t know who.”

Even Starlink is likely being jammed

This is the third time Iran has shut down the internet from the outside world. The first was in 2019, when demonstrators angry about a spike in government-subsidized gasoline prices took to the streets. Over 300 people reportedly were killed.

Then came the protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the country’s morality police over allegedly not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities. A monthslong crackdown killed more than 500 people.

While the connectivity offered by Starlink played a role in the Amini demonstrations, the deployment of its receivers is now far greater in Iran. That's despite the government never authorizing Starlink to function, making the service illegal to possess and use.

A year ago, an Iranian official estimated tens of thousands of Starlink receivers in the country, a figure that Los Angeles-based internet freedom activist Mehdi Yahyanejad said sounded right.

While many receivers likely are in the hands of business people and others wanting to stay in touch with the outside world for their livelihoods, Yahyanejad said some are now being used to share videos, photos and other reporting on the protests.

“In this case, because all those things have been disrupted, Starlink is playing the key for getting all these videos out,” Yahyanejad said.

However, Starlink receivers are facing challenges. Since its 12-day war with Israel last June, Iran has been disrupting GPS signals, likely in a bid to make drones less effective. Starlink receivers use GPS signals to position themselves to connect to a constellation of low-orbit satellites.

Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at the Miaan Group and an expert on Iran, said that since Thursday he had seen about a 30% loss in packets being sent by Starlink devices — basically units of data that transmit across the internet. In some areas of Iran, Rashidi said there had been an 80% loss in packets.

“I believe the Iranian government is doing something beyond GPS jamming, like in Ukraine where Russia tried to jam Starlink,” Rashidi said. He suggested Iran may be using a mobile jammer, like it did in previous decades to disrupt satellite television receivers.

The International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, has called on Iran to stop jamming in the past.

Meanwhile, Iran has been advocating at the ITU for Starlink service to the country to be stopped.

Help ‘needs to come soon’

It appears that the majority of information coming out of Iran since Thursday night is being transmitted via Starlink, which is now illegal. That carries dangers for those possessing the devices.

“It’s really hard to use it because if they arrest a person, they can execute the person and say this person is working for Israel or the United States,” Jangravi said.

Not using it, however, means the world knows even less about what's happening inside Iran at a pivotal moment.

“This sort of nonviolent protest is not sustainable when the violence (by security forces) is so extreme,” Yahyanejad said. “Unless something changes in the next two or three days, these protests can die down, too. If there’s any help, it needs to come soon.”

World

One Dead, Seven Missing After Migrant Boat Sinks off Türkiye

This photograph shows the oil tanker the "Maridive 703" sailing in the search-and-rescue zone of the international waters between Malta and Tunisia, on December 31, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows the oil tanker the "Maridive 703" sailing in the search-and-rescue zone of the international waters between Malta and Tunisia, on December 31, 2025. (AFP)
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One Dead, Seven Missing After Migrant Boat Sinks off Türkiye

This photograph shows the oil tanker the "Maridive 703" sailing in the search-and-rescue zone of the international waters between Malta and Tunisia, on December 31, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows the oil tanker the "Maridive 703" sailing in the search-and-rescue zone of the international waters between Malta and Tunisia, on December 31, 2025. (AFP)

One person died and seven others were missing Saturday after a migrant boat sank in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Türkiye, the Turkish coast guard said.

Thirty-seven passengers on a rubber dinghy which took on water before dawn off the western city of Dikili, north of Izmir, were rescued alive, the coast guard stated.

Dikili, a small seaside resort, faces the Greek island of Lesbos, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.

"Search operations ... are continuing to find the seven missing irregular migrants," the coast guard said.

Shipwrecks are common for perilous crossings to the Greek islands, which are a gateway to the European Union.

Nearly 1,900 migrants either disappeared or were found drowned in the Mediterranean in 2025, according to the International Organization for Migration.