Zara Mohammadi, a Kurdish language teacher and social activist, was charged with “establishing a committee and group that is against the stability and security of the system” and sentenced to five years in prison by a Sanandaj appeals court in February 2021.
Mohammadi was informed this week by the judiciary of Sanandaj, in Iran’s western Kurdistan Province, that she would have to turn herself in to serve her five year sentence, according to a statement from her organisation, the Nojin Cultural Association.
Nojin Cultural Association is an organization whose work includes teaching Kurdish language and literature. At the time of its director, Mohammadi’s, arrest, the association was teaching Kurdish to hundreds of children in and around Sanandaj.
Arrested in May 2019, Mohammadi had initially been sentenced to 10 years in jail before launching an appeal.
“In the past few days, I was informed that I need to turn myself in,” Mohammadi told Rudaw’s Dildar Harki on Monday. “Since there are no legal paths that we can take anymore, in the next few days I will gather what I need and turn myself in within the next four to five days.”
According to Mohammadi, she was charged with forming groups that would harm the national security of Iran, and the sentence for that article of the law is between two to ten years.
She was released on a bail of 700 million Iranian tomans (approximately $27,000) in December 2019 after her case gained worldwide attention and the support of Amnesty International.
Mohammadi “has been accused of co-operating with Kurdish opposition groups and charged with national security offences for her peaceful activities empowering members of Iran’s marginalized Kurdish community, including through teaching the Kurdish language,” Amnesty International wrote in its appeal for her release.
Since the heightening of US-Iran tensions and re-imposition of US sanctions in 2018, Iranian authorities have tightened the noose on labor activists, journalists, satirists, environmentalists, anti-death penalty campaigners, and researchers, detaining them in droves and sentencing some in trials whose fairness has been questioned.
Tens of thousands of people are held as political prisoners in Iranian jails, on charges including advocating for democracy and promoting women's or workers' rights.
Ethnic minority groups, including Kurds and Azeris, are disproportionately detained and more harshly sentenced for acts of political dissidence, according to a July 2019 report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran.
According to data provided to Rudaw English by the Paris based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) founder Rebin Rahmani on Monday, more than 450 Kurdish civilians and activists were arrested in Iran in 2021.
