Iran put to dying over 2,150 folks final 12 months, a “staggering” enhance that pushed recorded worldwide executions to their highest degree since 1981, Amnesty Worldwide mentioned Monday.
Amnesty mentioned it had confirmed the executions of at the least 2,707 folks globally in 2025. Of those circumstances, 2,159 had been in Iran, a determine greater than double that of 2024, Amnesty mentioned.
However the UK-based rights group mentioned that, as in earlier years, its whole “doesn’t embody the hundreds of executions” that it believed had been carried out in China, the world’s most prolific person of the dying penalty, attributable to “the state secrecy” over information.
Amnesty mentioned the determine of at the least 2,707 folks executed in 2025 — together with in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Yemen, Singapore and the USA — represented a rise by greater than two-thirds on the full the earlier 12 months.
“This development was strongest in international locations the place the authorities have tightened their grip on energy by proscribing civic house, silencing dissent and displaying disregard for protections established beneath worldwide human rights legislation and requirements,” it added.
Particularly, the “staggering enhance in recorded executions in Iran” got here as authorities “intensified their use of the dying penalty as a software of political repression and management” specifically after the June 2025 conflict with Israel.
– Linked to protests –
Amnesty and different rights teams have famous that Iran is stepping up its use of the dying penalty once more in 2026 after January protests and the conflict towards Israel and the USA, with executions on fees linked to the protests and membership of banned teams.
The group mentioned the recognized whole of two,159 executions carried out in Iran in 2025 — a significantly increased determine than that printed by the Norway-based Iran Human Rights NGO earlier this 12 months — “constituted the best determine on document since 1981” within the nation. It was additionally the best globally since that 12 months.
The development was mirrored — albeit on a lesser scale — elsewhere within the area.
Saudi Arabia final 12 months carried out at the least 356 executions, surpassing its already record-high determine of at the least 345 for 2024, it mentioned.
Executions in Kuwait virtually tripled, from six in 2024 to 17.
In Egypt, they almost doubled, from 13 to 23.
In Yemen, the yearly determine rose by greater than a 3rd, from at the least 38 to at the least 51, it added.
In the USA — the one nation within the Americas to have carried out executions in 2025 — the “unprecedented rise” of executions in Florida to 19 drove the nationwide whole to 47, the best determine since 2009, it mentioned.
Singapore authorities carried out 17 executions, the best quantity within the nation since 2003, it added.
China’s “state secrecy” over its use of the dying penalty “pointed to an intentional use of the dying penalty to ship a message that the state wouldn’t tolerate threats to public safety or stability”, mentioned Amnesty.
“Amnesty Worldwide continues to contemplate China because the world’s main executioner,” it mentioned.
