ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian security forces have detained at least five Kurdish men in Iran's Kurdish-majority western regions (Rojhelat) over the past several days, a rights watchdog reported on Thursday, saying several of the arrests were carried out without judicial warrants.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported on Thursday that the detainees include Sabah Waladbeigi, Kamal Piranpour, Mullah Abu Bakr Yousifi, Younes Mousapour, and Sardar Ostadahmadi, saying they were arrested by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Paveh, Sardasht, and Mahabad.
According to KHRN, intelligence forces raided the family homes of Ostadahmadi and Piranpour in Mahabad on Monday, arresting both men without presenting judicial warrants before transferring them to security detention centers.
On Saturday evening, IRGC intelligence forces reportedly stormed a garden house in the town of Nalas, near Sardasht, claiming members of a Kurdish opposition party were present. KHRN said security forces opened fire during the raid before violently arresting Yousifi and Mousapour.
Waladbeigi, a retired teacher and environmental activist from Paveh, was arrested at his family home in the village of Nuryab on July 1 by Ministry of Intelligence forces.
KHRN said Waladbeigi informed his family in a brief phone call a day after his arrest that he had been transferred to a detention facility in Kermanshah. He heads the Noor mountaineering group in Paveh and has previously been summoned by Iranian security agencies.
The latest arrests come amid a continued wave of detentions targeting Kurdish civilians in Rojhelat. On Tuesday, KHRN said two Kurdish men from Marivan, Salam Bahrami and Sarvar Bahrami, remain detained without a clear legal status more than three months after being arrested by Ministry of Intelligence forces. The pair are accused of collaborating with a Kurdish opposition party and were reportedly held for two months in solitary confinement without access to lawyers or family visits.
In a separate report published in June, KHRN said at least five Kurdish citizens were detained in Mahabad, Bukan, and Oshnavieh, while noting that at least twenty-two Kurdish citizens had been arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence and IRGC intelligence forces across Kurdistan over the previous month.
Rights groups have repeatedly accused Iranian authorities of carrying out arbitrary arrests of Kurdish activists and civilians, particularly since the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, often without warrants and while denying detainees access to legal representation or information about their whereabouts.
