Hedayat Abdollahpour was forcibly disappeared after being transferred to an undisclosed location on 9 May from the Central Prison of Urmia, in West Azerbaijan province. His family was given a death certificate only last week saying he “died” on May 11, says the watchdog.
“The certificate states his death was as a result of “being hit by hard or sharp objects” and does not clarify that the death resulted from an execution - even though his family was told on 10 June that he had been executed in secret,” reads a statement put out by Amnesty on Tuesday.
The organization says it has previously documented this wording on death certificates of those killed by fire squad.
“The relentlessly cruel games the Iranian authorities are playing with Hedayat Abdollahpour’s family must stop. By refusing to reveal the truth, they are deliberately causing untold distress to his loved ones,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said in the statement.
Abdollahpour was arrested on August 3, 2016 after he was accused of having ties with the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), and attacking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on June 14, 2016.
“A disproportionate number of those executed since January were members of Iran’s Kurdish minority,” a May Amnesty report reads.
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.
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.
