ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iran carried out the death penalty of 975 people in 2024, according to a rights monitor which described the figure as a “horrifying escalation” and the highest execution rate in the country in the past 16 years.

Iran’s execution toll rose by 17 percent from 834 in 2023 to 975 in 2024, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights’ (IHR) annual report, marking the highest number since the organization started recording in 2008.

Drug-related offenses accounted for the majority of last year’s executions, with at least 503 suspects put to death. At least 419 people were executed for murder charges, the report added.

“While the world's attention was focused on escalating tensions between Iran and Israel, the Islamic Republic exploited the lack of international scrutiny to terrorise its own people, carrying out 5 to 6 executions every single day,” said IHR Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

Iran is one of 47 countries that still retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes without a moratorium on executions, according to French rights group Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM).

Since 1976, more than 85 nations have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while others have abolished it for ordinary crimes, according to the US-based Death Penalty Information Center.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly accused Iran of using the death penalty to suppress minority groups and silence dissidence.

The majority of executions in recent years have been for drug-related offenses, which have disproportionately targeted ethnic and religious minorities, mainly the Baluch.

Many of those who are executed in Iran are sentenced based on what rights monitors have labeled “tainted confessions” often obtained under duress.

Over 120 people have so far been executed in Iran in 2025, according to IHR.