Iran publicly hangs teenage wrestling star after he was ‘tortured into false confession’

Iran has executed three men as part of the regime’s anti-protest crackdown, with a teen wrestler among those hanged.

Three men were executed after being accused of killing police officers during the demonstrations in January, according to Iranian state-linked media.

Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old wrestler in the Iranian national team, was executed yesterday morning after the sentence in the city of Qom following alleged confessions.

The two others killed along with Mohammadi have been named as Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi.

iran

However, the false confessions were extracted using torture, human rights campaigners say.

The men were convicted of ‘moharebeh’ or waging war against God, which carries the death penalty Iranian authorities have used to target dissidents.

Tasnim news agency, which is linked to the feared Iranian security forces, reported that the men had confessed, they had a defense lawyer and that the executions came after ‘legal procedures,’ the New York Times reports.

The wrestler was arrested in mid-January and sentenced to death last month, according to Amnesty International.

It said that Mohammadi had told the court he confessed ‘under torture and other ill-treatment.’

Mohammadi, who is reportedly from Qom, the city where he was killed, made his last Instagram post in December, showing him training dressed in gym clothes with an Iranian flag emblazoned on his shirt.

Earlier posts showed the young athlete competing in Russia along with the national team, where they all took home medals.

His social media has been flooded with hundreds of messages from around the world.

One message posted in mid-January which had tagged the US president Donald Trump’s official handle said: ‘They are planning to execute him. Please don’t stay silent. The people of Iran need the world to speak up now. Every minute matters. Stop this execution.’

Iran has had a violent start to the year after the demonstrations, a mounting death toll and attacks started by US and Israel in late February, with the Middle East conflict now raging across the region.

In 2025, the regime reportedly executed more than 2,000 people, the highest number of executions since the 1980s. Over half of the capital punishments were for drug offences.