On July 27, 2025, the Iranian regime executed two political prisoners—Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani—in silence and without due process, announcing their deaths through a news ticker on state television. From inside the walls of Qarchak Prison, political prisoner and writer Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee penned this powerful and heartbreaking testimony. In it, she captures the collective mourning, defiance, and enduring spirit of resistance shared among incarcerated activists.
How Fiercely We Cling to Life
By Political Prisoner Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee – Qarchak Prison, July 2025
“The news came.
From there.
From them.
Their clothes were spotless. Their brows uncreased.”
On the morning of July 27, 2025,
the regime’s execution of two political prisoners
was quietly scrolled across the ticker of the state news channel.
In the quarantine ward of Qarchak Prison,
we stood beneath the flickering television screen,
lined up in silence.
No one could speak.
A heavy grief filled the air like smoke.
Eyes welled.
We stood frozen, stunned.
A few moments later, the names were added:
Mehdi Hassani. Behrouz Ehsani.
We had never seen their faces,
never heard their voices—
yet something in us had known them deeply.
It was as if pieces of our own flesh had been sent to the gallows—
and in truth, they had.
For months, their names echoed with ours—
in our chants, our songs,
our cries during the “Tuesdays Against Executions.”
We had shouted for them,
spoken of them in conversations through prison walls,
remembered them alongside other comrades trapped under death sentences.
Executed.
And the absence of them
filled our chests with fury, with aching sorrow.
We whispered to ourselves:
“We know they stood firm. We know they endured…”
We were shaken by the cruelty—
though it was no stranger to us.
They Dragged Them in Chains
The agents of repression came for Behrouz and Mehdi
with fists, with shackles,
dragging them from their cells in chains.
They had already transferred Saeed Masouri—
our symbol of endurance,
a man who has spent 25 years in unbroken captivity—
to another prison,
and now they led Behrouz and Mehdi
to their execution.
How fiercely we cling to life…
By nightfall, we had wiped the dust of mourning from our faces,
swallowed the lump in our throats.
We even rose above the cruel sneers of a few hardened cellmates—sneers that clawed at the soul.
Hand in hand,
we raised our voices.
We sang the anthem of resistance.
We honored the memory of those two
who walked the path of freedom to its final step.
They had lived, to the very end,
the truth in the words of Nazim Hikmet:
“I know they stared the enemy down with a smile.
No furrow touched their brows…”
Their memory is sacred.
Their path—paved in courage and sacrifice—will be followed.
