Iran executes Baluch man convicted in deadly police station attack
Iranian media reported Saturday that authorities had executed Mohammad Aref Shahbakhsh, a Baluch man convicted in a case involving a police station attack that left several officers dead or wounded in southeastern Iran.
Mariam Al Mansoori
Conviction linked to attack in Khash
Shahbakhsh was convicted of armed rebellion and "waging war against God" over the attack on the Qaleh Bid police station in Khash, Sistan-Baluchistan province. Semi-official Iranian media described him as a member of Jaish al-Adl.
The report gave neither a date for the attack nor a breakdown of police casualties. A separate account from Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency, citing the Iranian judiciary, dated the attack to August 2024. Neither account provided a specific casualty count.
Other executions
Iran also executed alleged Jaish al-Adl member Omar Darastaran on October 12, 2026, according to the judiciary's Mizan news agency. His conviction for "aiding armed rebellion" concerned support for the group's April 2024 attacks on police and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases in Rask and Chabahar.
Amnesty International puts the number of people executed in Iran in 2025 at no fewer than 2,159.
Jaish al-Adl and regional fighting
Jaish al-Adl has repeatedly attacked Iranian security forces in the country's southeast, where it operates near the Pakistani border. Iran and the United States designate it as a terrorist organization; the group describes its cause as defending the rights of Iran's Baluch minority.
Members of the Sunni militant group Jundullah founded Jaish al-Adl in 2012. Its attacks include a February 13, 2019, suicide bombing of a bus carrying IRGC personnel that killed 27 people.
In December 2025, Jaish al-Adl joined three other Baluch armed groups in a merger forming the People's Fighters Front, also known as Jebhe-ye Mobarezin-e Mardomi, or JMM. The other groups were PADA Baluch, Harakate Nasr Baluchistan and the Mohammad Rasulullah military group, according to FDD's Long War Journal.
As of October 8, 2026, ACLED had documented about 70 armed confrontations that year between armed groups and Iranian security forces in Sistan-Baluchistan. That was already the highest annual total in at least a decade, the research group said. Thirteen of those confrontations occurred in the preceding two weeks.
