ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Some 4,500 prisoners in Tehran have been granted leave for the Newroz holiday, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) affiliated outlet Farsnews reported Hashemtallah Hayat al-Ghayb, the director of the province's prisons as saying on Sunday.
In Iran, Newroz is a two-week long celebration that begins on the first day of the Iranian calendar month of Farvardin, equivalent to March 21.
Kurdish political prisoner Mustafa Sabzi was granted leave on Sunday, close to seven years since his arrest in June 2014 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). Interrogated for two months in a security detention center near the city of Urmia, northwest Iran, he was sentenced a few months later to 15 years in prison, later reduced to 10 years, KHRN said.
Two other prisoners, from the Kurdish cities of Saqqez and Mahabad, were also released on bail, after months of detention.
On Sunday, Iran announced that it would be reducing the sentences of or pardoning 1,849 convicts to mark the birthday of the twelfth Shiite Imam Mahdi and the Islamic Republic Day
Every year, Khamenei pardons a number of prisoners at the request of the head of the judiciary on important religious and national holidays. Article 110 in Iran's constitution grants the Supreme Leader many leadership and duty powers, including "pardoning or reducing the sentences of convicts, within the framework of Islamic criteria."
Three renowned environmental experts were among the several thousand people that were given leave for Newroz, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Sam Rajabi, Sepeideh Kashani and Amirhossein Khaleghi were given leave from Evin prison, north of Tehran on Monday. They were amongst eight well-known Iranian environmentalists who were tried in January 2018 on charges of spying for the United States. The following year, they were given jail sentences ranging from four to ten years long.
Human Rights Watch called the trial “unfair”, and said the defendants were not allowed to see the full dossier of evidence.
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