28 Kurdish prisoners facing death sentence

GVF — At least 28 Kurdish prisoners face execution in Iranian prisons, says the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

On Thursday, the organisation said that at least 28 Iranian Kurds were facing the death sentence for “political and security-related” charges. The inmates are reportedly being held at prisons in Sanandaj, Urmia, Semnan, Rajaei Shahr and Saqqez.

The report stated that death sentences had been upheld for seventeen of the prisoners while the rest were awaiting the Supreme Court’s final decision.

The Campaign speculated that owing to the severe restrictions on human rights defenders in Iran, the real number of Iranian Kurds on death row could be higher than previously thought.

According to the rights group, some of the prisoners had been charged with taking arms against the state and moharebeh (enmity with God).

“In many of the cases, the legal procedure was not respected, the defendants had no access to lawyer and their testimonies in the trial phase were neglected,” the Campaign said. “In some cases … the defendants claim that they were physically tortured and abused while under interrogation.”

Habibollah Latifi, Rashid Akhkandi, Mostafa Salimi, Shirko Moarefi, Habibollah Golparipour, Zanyar Moradi and Loghman Moradi are amongst the seventeen prisoners whose death sentences have been approved. The International Campaign for Human Rights claims that ten of the seventeen have been linked to Salafist groups.

The cases of eleven death row prisoners are still in the appeal phase. They are: Samko Khorshidi, Sirvan Nejadi, Ebrahim Isapour, Rouzgar (Habib) Afshari, Ali Afshari, Houshang Rezaei, Reza Esmaili, Behrouz Alkhani, Seyed Sami Hosseini and Seyed Jamal Mohammad and Bakhtiar Memari.