Iran executed mountaineer Ali-Sina Mostafavi on 14 October

Iranian mountaineer Ali-Sina Mostafavi was executed on 14 October, The Guardian said in its 27 October report. He had been arrested in April, and Iran’s Supreme Court upheld his death sentence at the end of September.

Human Rights for Sport, an Oslo-based group of former Iranian athletes, says at least six other athletes face execution after the Supreme Court upheld their sentences. The group said six athletes had already been executed in cases linked to January’s anti-government protests or earlier political charges.

Mostafavi was accused of being an “armed agent of the American-Zionist enemy”, allegedly opening fire on civilians in Kerman’s Azadi Square on 24 March and taking part in January’s protests, The Guardian said. These are the accusations against him, not established accounts of his conduct.

Athletes the group says face execution

The athletes the group says face execution include swimmer Ali Pishevarzadeh and footballer Ehsan Hosseinpour, both arrested during January’s protests. Boxer Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani was arrested in 2020 over participation in protests the previous year; his request for a retrial was rejected in 2025. The full offences and court findings underlying each athlete’s sentence remain unclear.

Human Rights for Sport believes the authorities target athletes to warn the wider population, pointing to the coverage that executions of prominent sportspeople receive in state-run media. That is the group’s interpretation of the authorities’ motive.

Zohreh Abdollahkhani, of Human Rights for Sport, said raising attention through other organisations had secured a temporary halt to one athlete’s execution. Contact with condemned athletes was difficult because security services were also targeting some relatives. In one case, a sister and brother-in-law had been arrested and the family’s telephone lines were under surveillance.