Tragic last vows: Iranian protesters marry in jail via phone call hours before groom’s execution

An Iranian protester facing four death sentences was executed by hanging on Monday (Oct 5), hours after marrying a fiancée, a fellow prisoner in a ceremony held while the two were in separate cells in Isfahan, a rights lawyer told news outlet The Times. Alireza Sepahi, 25, and Mahshad Keshani, 22, a student activist serving five years in prison, knew each other before their arrests. As fears grew last Sunday (Oct 4) that Sepahi could be executed within hours, they asked Tehran-based rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi to marry them. Their fathers listened by phone as he read the vows. The symbolic dowry was a Quran, a stick of saffron rock candy and a red rose. The ceremony lasted about nine minutes.

Davoudi said the idea was Keshani's. He first thought she was acting impulsively, he said, but she told him she loved Sepahi.

Sepahi wept and signed the consent document once he realised the proposal was genuine, Davoudi said. Keshani's father, whose daughter is an only child, also consented. The families knew each other through a community formed among protesters and their relatives after the January crackdown.

Davoudi hoped the wedding would draw international attention and halt the execution, but it carried no power to overturn the sentences.

Sepahi was convicted in the "Alikhani Square" trial, in which more than a dozen young men were accused of involvement in the deaths of security officers in Isfahan. Authorities say the defendants were responsible for the deaths of four officers during unrest on January 8.

Sepahi was arrested at his family home on January 10. A former cellmate said he was hit by shotgun pellets during the raid and then interrogated and tortured for 26 days at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps detention centre. Civil society activist Mehdi Mahmoudian alleged that defendants were tortured and threatened with sexual violence to make them implicate one another.

Davoudi said 15 masked IRGC interrogators attended the trial and that no evidence was presented beyond confessions the defendants said were extracted under torture. He said Sepahi denied being present when the officers were killed and that the court declined to examine footage that could have established his location.

Sepahi had previously been prepared for a public hanging on July 28. His cousin and another defendant were hanged that day. Davoudi said Sepahi suffered a heart attack shortly before his scheduled execution and remained unconscious in hospital for several days.

Keshani was first detained in July 2023 and arrested again during the January protests. She was sentenced to five years on charges including "propaganda against the system". Her sentence was upheld on appeal, and she is held in Dolatabad prison.

Rights groups said Sepahi was the sixth defendant in the case to be executed. Iran Human Rights says at least 32 protesters have been executed in connection with the January protests since March 19.

Davoudi rejected the term "execution", calling the cases "state killings based on confessions extracted under torture".