Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, Mashhad's prosecutor said that "500 prisoners are facing the gallows."
This is the second time in less than a month that shocking news of increasing number of death row inmates surface in Iran.

The first was that of the 150 prisoners soon to face gallows in the southern city of Dashtistan in the coastal province of Bushehr.

Colonel Ardeshir Gholami, chief of the State Security Forces (SSF) – mullahs' suppressive police -- in Dashtistan in an interview with the state-run daily Payam Asaloyeh, stated while defending the public execution of four prisoners in a Borazjan's city squares also in Bushehr, on July 10, that “the people of this city have more than 150 murderers in jail facing the gallows.  The debate is on publicizing the executions. People will see that there is order in the country and that the law will punish whoever commits a murder."
 
While the state-run media is calling public executions a violation of an order issued by Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, the chief of mullahs' judiciary, the governor of the city of Dashtistan in recent days revealed that the executions have been conducted in public after securing a permit from Shahroudi. 
Gholamreza Keshtgar, the governor of Dashtistan, told Payam Asaloyeh, "Execution in public has been banned unless approved by an order from the chief of the judiciary, or in special cases.  In the city of Dashtistan, the authorities demanded a public execution and Shahroudi permitted." 

On January 30, the speaker of the judiciary, five months before the execution of four prisoners in Borazjan, held a press conference where he discussed an order related to the ban on public executions by Shahroudi.
 
According to Gholami, in July alone, twelve prisoners were executed in the Borazjan with a population of 250,000.
NCRI

Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, mullahs' judiciary chief upheld death sentence for a minor, reported the state-run daily Etemaad on Sunday. The teenager was identified only by his first, Rahim, allegedly committed a crime when he was 15.
 
In his last trial Rahim maintained that he was innocent and acted in self-defense in a group fight.

Earlier this month, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) expressed grave concern over the violation of human rights in Iran. U.N. Human Rights official, Rupert Colville, told reporters "On the 27th of July, for example, 29 executions are reported to have taken place. A month later, on the 28th of August, another five people, including a woman, were reported to have been executed. In all, more than 220 people, including six juvenile offenders, are believed to have been executed this year in Iran already.
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"Iran's legal obligation not to impose the death penalty for juveniles was assumed voluntarily when it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed by people below the age of 18,'' Coleville added.

International outrage over the wave of executions heightened in late August when the regime executed two teenagers, Reza Hejazi and Behnam Zare, for crimes they allegedly committed when they were under 18. On September 10, the state-run daily Etemaad reported that the mullahs’ Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence for a 17-year-old boy named Hossein for a crime he allegedly committed when 14. According to rights groups, 140 minors are awaiting the death penalty in Iran.