A death row Syrian Kurdish political prisoner has been transferred to an unknown location from Iran’s Orumiyeh Central Prison for unspecified reasons, sources told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
The KHRN has learned that Iranian security forces have transferred death row political prisoner Kamal Hassan Ramazan from Orumiyeh Central Prison to “an unknown location at around 11 pm on 7 September 2019.”
The sudden relocation was followed by protests and strikes by prisoners of conscience on 6 September.
The special prison guards searched the ward of political prisoners before destroying and confiscating personal belongings of the prisoners on 7 September 2019. The incident led to several hours of protests and strikes by the prisoners.
Kamal Hassan Ramadan Profile:
While in prison, he was taken for interrogation for eight days in December 2016, 10 days in January 2017, seven days in December 2017, and eight days in August 2018 at the detention centres of the Islamic Republic Guards Corps (IRGC’) and the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh. He was pressured to give false confessions but he had refused.
The political prisoner is a 33-year-old Syrian Kurd from the city of Serekaniye ([Ras al-Ayn in Arabic] in the Syrian Kurdistan region known as Rojava.
He was arrested by the security forces in Iran’s Orumiyeh on 28 August 2014. He was then taken to Orumiyeh Central Prison after four months of interrogation at the detention centres of the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence.
Last August, following his sudden relocation to the Ministry of Intelligence’s Detention Centre in Orumiyeh when he was faced with the risk of his death sentence being implemented, Amnesty International issued a statement expressing concern over his situation and called for the immediate revocation of his death penalty.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on 14 August 2015 on charges of “membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) by Second Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh. His imprisonment sentence was later reduced to seven years.
Over the past few years, despite that his verdict was finalised, was has been taken to the Security Detention Centre of Orumiyeh four times and interrogated for alleged killing of an IRGC member in 2011. He denies having any role in the murder.
He was formally summoned when the verdict was issued by the Enforcement Office of Orumiyeh Prison on May 2017.
This verdict was already issued in absentia by the Third Branch of Islamic Revolutionary Court for a defendant named “Kamal Sur” over the murder of an IRGC member. The Iranian authorities used the verdict for Kamal Hassan Ramazan because he has the first name of the defendant for whom a death sentence was issued in absentia.
