🔗 Share this article

In excess of 20 Olympic medal winners, mentors and further world-class competitors have signed a statement urging a end to the execution of a champion boxer and coach, who is on death row in the country.

Escalating Worldwide Condemnation

During rising international outrage over Iran’s escalating use of executions as a means of repression, the strongly worded statement denounces the authorities's verdict to confirm the execution order of the boxing champion.

Vafaei Sani, thirty, from the city in north-east Iran, was taken into custody for being involved in countrywide demonstrations in 2019 and charged of aiding an opposition group. He has spent 60 months in incarceration, where he has been mistreated and confined in solitary confinement.

“Competition is meant to encourage hope, togetherness, and bravery,” the endorsers wrote. “The capital punishment of a titleholder for his beliefs is a blatant attack on these ideals and a admonition to any competitor who attempts to express dissent.

Pattern of Executing Competitors

The appeal pointed out that Vafaei Sani’s case was part of a pattern and highlighted Iran’s record of executing competitors for their convictions, for example a national team leader, leader of the football side, and Fourouzan Abdi, captain of the women's volleyball squad. In two thousand twenty, a wrestling champion, a 27-year Iranian sports titleholder, was put to death.

Further signatories to the appeal include a yachting pioneer, who skippered the inaugural all-female crew in a round-the-world competition and was the pioneering lady to earn a prestigious sailing award; the previous leader of the national squad an athlete; and Bahram Mavaddat, who was in the Iranian squad for the international competition.

Arrest and Unfair Trial

The athlete was taken into custody in early 2020. The accusations against him comprised “spreading corruption on Earth through fire-setting and destruction of public property”. His ruling has been overturned multiple times but on October 4 it was maintained on the third occasion. His legal proceedings was condemned as “grossly unfair” by rights defenders and groups.

Urging to UN

The call to prevent the athlete's execution comes after a previous letter to the United Nations official for freedoms, endorsed by more than one hundred human rights experts and organizations, calling for measures to avert the sports figure's death.

Death Penalty Surge

Based on reports, there is an “death penalty surge in Iran, which has achieved horrific levels”. In the year 2023, the government put to death at least 853 people – a nearly half rise on the previous year. In the prior period, data showed 972 capital punishments, constituting the maximum count since two thousand fifteen. Over hundreds of people have been executed so far in 2025.

Political prisoners and protesters are targets, particularly in the aftermath of the the year 2022 protests. Experts say the Iranian authorities have utilized the death penalty to suppress protest, instil fear among the population and reinforce their control on authority.