ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Two Iranian Kurdish political prisoners who were on death row and transferred to solitary confinement at the Urmia Central Prison on Monday were executed early Tuesday morning, according to a Kurdish human rights group.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRC) confirmed on Tuesday that Saber Sheikh Abdullah and Diako Rasoulzadeh were executed earlier in the morning. Their bodies are still to be handed back to their families.
Convicted in 2017 of ‘moharebeh’, or waging war against God, Abdullah and Rasoulzadeh were accused of membership of the Komala Party, an armed Kurdish opposition group, and orchestrating a 2010 bombing in Mahabad. Advocates argued the charges were based on coerced confessions obtained through torture.
The two prisoners were arrested by security forces at their homes in Mahabad in March 2014 and later transferred to the Intelligence Detention Centre in Urmia.
They were sentenced to death along with Hossein Osmani, another political prisoner, in October 2017 by the First Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia. Their verdicts were later approved by the Supreme Court for execution in late October 2017.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRC) expressed concern on Monday over their sudden transfer to solitary confinement, fearing execution was imminennt.
"We are calling on the Iranian government to immediately stop this imminent decision of executing the prisoners, because they have been charged with a crime they never committed and that they had initially confessed under torture " Rebin Rahmani, a KHRC board member, told Rudaw English.
Tens of thousands of political prisoners are jailed in Iran over various 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 from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
Late last month, Amnesty International called on Iranian authorities to reveal the details surrounding the secret execution of Kurdish Iranian prisoner Hedayat Abdollahpour and return his body to his family, days after relatives received his official death certificate.
Since the re-imposition of US sanctions and the heightening of tensions, authorities in Iran have started tightening the noose on labor activists, journalists, satirists, environmentalists, anti-death penalty campaigners, and researchers, who have been detained in droves, with some sentenced in trials whose fairness has been questioned.
