The rights group also warned that the real number of protesters facing the death penalty could be much because families were being pressured to stay quiet by Iranian authorities.

All defendants had been “deprived of the right to access their own lawyer, due process and fair trials”, IHR said.

“In cases where they have managed to make contact, or details of their cases [have been] reported by cellmates and human rights defenders, all have been subjected to physical and mental torture to force false self-incriminating confessions,” the rights group added.

Earlier this month, two men were executed in Iran following trials which were slammed by activists. Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard were found guilty of the national security charge of “enmity against God”.

This comes as protests in Iran which erupted following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was detained by morality police in Tehran, have continued for more than 100 days. Mahsa Amini was arrested in September for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.

In the crackdown against the protests, at least 476 protesters have been killed, including 64 children and 34 women, according to IHR.

“By issuing death sentences and executing some of them, [the authorities] want to make people go home,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam told AFP.

“It has some effect,” he said, but added that “what we’ve observed in general is more anger against the authorities.”