Teacher and activist Badal Barwari has been released and is on his way home in Duhok, lawyer Aso Hashim said.
His brother, Hamdi Barwari, confirmed the news of his release.
Barwari was sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday. The one-year sentence was being counted as time served since November 25 last year, Gorran MP Ali Hama Saleh told reporters when the ruling was handed down. He was scheduled to be released next month after the one year is served.
However, the detainee was surprisingly released on Wednesday.
“There was a mistake in the prison’s text that was sent to court. It was written that teacher Badal was arrested on November 25, 2020, when he was actually arrested in May of 2020,” the lawyer said.
He was released after the mistake was fixed, he added.
Teacher and activist Barwari was arrested along with journalist Omed Baroshki in Duhok in the summer of 2020 after anti-government protests over unpaid wages. They were among dozens of other journalists and activists arrested.
Baroshki was also sentenced to one year but he will face "some defamation cases in Duhok." He was convicted in June and sentenced to a year in prison on a separate charge of “misusing a communication device.”
The pair was first put on trial with five others who were convicted in February for “endangering the national security of the Kurdistan Region.”
The trials of two other groups of defendants arrested around the same time are also making their way through the courts.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has come under fire for the prosecution of the Duhok detainees. European diplomats in June said they were concerned that “basic fair trial standards have not been respected” during the prosecution of Barwari and Baroshki’s five co-defendants.
Erbil has defended the trials, stating that the courts are independent and has requested assistance from the UN and foreign missions to strengthen the legal system and train judges.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government does not and will not interfere with legal processes. We call on the foreign and domestic entities to respect the court's decisions and heed the impartiality of the judicial process,” Dindar Zebari, the government’s coordinator for international advocacy, said in response to the EU statement
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