Iran, Afghanistan only countries conducting public executions, Guardian reports

Amnesty counted 2,707 global executions in 2025, highest since 1981

The Guardian reported on October 9 that the United States would join Iran and Afghanistan as one of a small number of states to carry out public executions in recent years if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth follows through on plans to livestream the December 3 execution of Maj Nidal Hasan. The Guardian cited Amnesty International data showing six public executions by Taliban authorities and 11 by Iran in 2025 — the only two countries the human rights organization identified as currently systematically carrying out capital sentences in public.

Hasan, a former US Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. The Army scheduled his execution for December 3, and Hegseth, who has the authority to decide the conduct of the killing, has said “of course” it would take place at the same time and place as the 2009 attack and would use firearms, as Hasan did. Hasan can launch appeals within the civilian federal court system that could delay the execution for many years.

In April 2025, Taliban authorities executed four men accused of murder in three different cities, shooting them dead in crowded public sports stadiums, The Guardian reported. Similar events were common when the Taliban was in power in the late 1990s; then as now, the group claimed a due court process had been followed.

In July, two young men accused of killing police officers were hanged by Iranian authorities in the central square of Isfahan, according to The Guardian. Human rights monitors reported about 30 public executions in Iran over the past five years, with an intensification in recent months after massive popular unrest earlier this year and the war with the United States and Israel. Historically, many hangings in Iran have been carried out using a crane as a makeshift gallows.

Saudi Arabia appears to have ended the practice after decades of beheading convicted criminals in a square in the capital, Riyadh, and sometimes publicly in provincial cities, The Guardian reported.

The Guardian reported that legal experts and historians argue public executions perform different functions: where the rule of law is shaky or the criminal justice system’s efficacy is doubted, they offer authorities seeking to win support a way of convincing the community that criminals will be punished; they can also be a means of cowing a population through terror. Armed militant groups have frequently resorted to public executions, often in an effort to assert their authority.

Islamic State, which ruled parts of Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2019, conducted thousands of executions for alleged offenses ranging from homosexuality to theft, The Guardian reported. Many of those executions took place in public or were videoed, and a large number were deliberately choreographed for broadcast to terrorize enemies and potential dissidents, and to radicalize IS supporters and attract new ones, the report said.

In October 2025, as Hamas sought to reassert its control over the population of Gaza, the group carried out a public execution of six men apparently accused of collaborating with Israel, The Guardian reported. In 2017, the group had executed three men accused of the same crime, partly livestreaming the event on Facebook.

The practice of public executions in the United States was largely stopped in the 1930s, The Guardian reported. In 2001, some survivors and victims’ relatives were allowed to watch the execution by lethal injection of Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Amnesty International recorded 2,707 executions globally in 2025, the highest total since 1981 and an increase of two-thirds over the previous year, The Guardian reported. The sharp rise was driven mainly by more than 2,100 executions by Iran, its highest number in decades. Amnesty said authorities had placed the death penalty “at the centre of flawed public security and ‘tough on crime’ narratives to assert control, project state power and score political points,” and that the trend “was strongest in countries where the authorities have tightened their grip on power by restricting civic space, silencing dissent and displaying disregard for protections established under international human rights law and standards.”