Iran executes 44-year-old father on charges of spying for Israel

Guards repeatedly pressured Shahbazi to sign pre-written confessions, promising his death sentence would be commuted to three years if he cooperated in front of his lawyer.

By Jewish Breaking News

Iranian authorities executed Babak Shahbazi on Wednesday, just one day after moving the father of two to solitary confinement when a Tehran court rejected his final appeal for a retrial.

Shahbazi, 44, had been convicted of spying for Israel based on what his family says was fabricated evidence and coerced testimony extracted through months of torture.

A person close to the family told Iran International that authorities never provided the customary final visit typically granted before executions.

“The court rejected our request for a retrial for the third time this morning and moved him to solitary confinement by around noon,” the family contact said.

“We are worried they may have taken him to solitary confinement in preparation for execution.”

Hours later, state media confirmed the execution had been carried out at Ghezel Hesar prison, located about 20 kilometers northwest of Tehran.

Central to the case were alleged messages Shahbazi sent to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2022, offering assistance against the Russian invasion. Iranian authorities later doctored these communications to make them appear as correspondence with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military officials.

Shahbazi was arrested in January 2024 and convicted on charges of “spying for Israel” and “corruption on earth.” Judge Abolghasem Salavati, sanctioned by the United States in 2019 for conducting unfair trials and extracting forced confessions, handed down the death sentence in May 2025.

Prison conditions during Shahbazi’s detention appeared designed to break him psychologically. Authorities placed him in a cell with an ISIS member, resulting in severe beatings that left both his eyes bruised during a family visit.

Guards repeatedly pressured Shahbazi to sign pre-written confessions, promising his death sentence would be commuted to three years if he cooperated in front of his lawyer.

When he refused, authorities proceeded with unsigned documents.

“He refused to sign because he hadn’t done those things. They even slipped in pages that weren’t his writing and told him to sign, but he didn’t,” says the source.

“Despite that, the court sentenced him to death on the basis of unsigned dictated notes.”

Rights groups condemned the proceedings against Shahbazi as fundamentally flawed from the start.

His execution marks the latest in a series of similar cases, with human rights monitors documenting that Tehran has put to death at least nine individuals for alleged Mossad espionage since its humiliating 12-day humiliating conflict in June with Israel.