Six Kurdish citizens of the village of ‘Ghoreh Saghl’ in the neighbourhood of Oshnavieh(Also known in Kurdish as Shno ) were recently sentenced to death and long jail sentences in Iran after they were charged with “Moharebeh” (Enmity against God) in Iranian Penal Code because of their alleged membership in an Kurdish party.

According to information obtained by Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN), back in June 2016, several citizens of this village were arrested following clashes between peshmerga fighters of the of Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and Iranian government’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). 
 
Six Kurdish citizens, who are civilians and not peshmerga fighters, Rassoul Azizi, Mohamad Zaher Faramarz, Yaghoub Baakram and two brothers Jalal and Kamal Masrouri were arrested on 19 June 2016, 
 
They were kept in the Iranian government’s Intelligence Agency detention centre of Orumiyeh, where they  were brutally interrogated and faced torture for 45 days. 
 
A few weeks later, on 3 August 2016, another Kurdish citizen,  Hedayat Ghaderi, was also arrested. 
 
He was also transferred to the Orumiyeh Intelligence Agency detention centre, where he faced severe torture for over two months and his torture included  electrical shocks, lashes with cables on his feet and being hung upside down to force him to speak a fabricated confession. 
 
He was transferred to Orumiyeh Central Prison after having spent two months at the detention centre. 

The Court Session for those six men was held on 17  January 2017.
A legal aid lawyer was present and the court session began under the presidency of Judge Chabok in Branch One of Orumiyeh Islamic Revolutionary Court.

The Judge issued the sentences as follows :
– Hedayat Abdullahpour : sentenced to death
– Rassoul Azizi : sentenced to 25 years in jail
– Mohamad Zaher Faramarzi : 20 years in jail
– Marsoei brothers : 15 years for Jalal and 10 years and one day for Kamal, respectively. 
– Yaghoub Bakram : 15 years and one day

Those sentences were confirmed to the aid lawyer a few days ago.

A source told the  KHRN that “the only fault of those men was that they had took food to the PDKI peshmerga fighters. It was considered by the Court as a sufficient evidence that they are members of the PDKI and acted against the state. It was enough to sentence them to death and long jail sentences”. 

The source said: “The lawyer was very confident and declared to their families that they will be acquitted of the ‘Moharebeh’ charges because there is no evidence against them. But all of them were still charged with ‘Moharebeh’. Hedayat Abdullahpour, the death row inmate, wasn’t even there when the clashes occurred. He came back a few days after the clashes and it has been clearly videotaped by the surveillance cameras of the city. By the way, he was arrested some 50 days after the clashes had happened.” 

The source added: “After they [the six prisoners] arrived at Orumiyeh Central Prison, Hedayat Abdullahpour was taken to psychological care department of the prison, while the other five were taken to the two wings of the prison known to used to jail some of the most dangerous prisoners.”