Rights organisations claim Iran executed a Kurdish “political prisoner”
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Salma Hossein
- . March 18, 2023
- . Update: March 18, 2023 10:18 pm
According to rights organisations, Iran executed a Kurdish man on Friday by hanging him, raising concerns about the country’s alarmingly high rate of executions this year.
In separate releases, the rights organisations Hengaw and Iran Human Rights (IHR), both located in Norway, confirmed that Mohayyedin Ebrahimi, 43, had been hanged at daybreak at the Urmia jail in northwest Iran.
The organisations said that five further individuals were put to death on Friday morning in Urmia on drug-related allegations.
After being shot in the leg during a fight in 2017, Ebrahimi was taken into custody and given a death sentence the following year.
He was charged with involvement in the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party, a prohibited organisation that has engaged in an armed fight for the territory of Iran that is home to the Kurdish people.
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Ebrahimi refuted the accusations, claiming that he had just been employed as a porter transporting products from Iraq.
He was referred to as a “political prisoner” by IHR and Hengaw who had been subjected to coerced confessions while incarcerated.
Amnesty International criticised the execution, saying it followed “a grossly unjust trial that relied on “confessions” obtained through torture.”
The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “must stop employing the death penalty as an instrument of political repression and declare a moratorium on executions,” the London-based rights organisation continued.
There were worries that Ebrahimi would soon be put to death after being allowed to meet with his family and being transferred to solitary prison.
IHR reported that once it became evident that his execution might be about to happen, a protest occurred outside the doors of Urmia jail late on Thursday, and his son was detained.
Hengaw claimed that once his sentence was postponed, Ebrahimi’s family was first informed that he was being transferred to a different prison before being contacted to pick up his body.
He had written a letter to IHR just before his execution appealing for help to save his life and calling the accusations “false and contrived.”
According to the official IRNA news agency, another prisoner who was convicted of killing a police officer was hanged on Thursday in the Khorramabad jail in western Iran.
The executions take place as concern about Iran’s high execution rate grows. Iran has also come under harsh international criticism for its crackdown on a protest movement that began in September.
In response to the protests, Iran has murdered four people. Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who had been detained for allegedly breaking the country’s severe dress code for women, died on September 16.
