Kurdish political prisoners are being put under increased pressure by the Prison Intelligence authorities, according to recently released reports.

During the past few days, Bashir Pirmavanah, political prisoners detained in Ward 13 of the Orumiyeh Central Prison has been summoned, interrogated and threatened for several hours by Intelligence authorities located in prison due to communicating with political prisoners.

During the interrogation, the Office of the Special Intelligence authorities insulted this political prisoner and warned him that new charges will be brought forward against him in the court if he continues communicating with political prisoners in Ward 12.

‘Bashir Pirmavanah, another Kurdish political prisoner detained in Ward 13, was arrested by Orumiyeh Intelligence Office forces in February 2016 and interrogated for 12 days at the detention centre of the Intelligence Ministry in Orumiyeh. He was later taken to the Orumiyeh Central Prison. In May 2017, he went on trial at the Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh/branch2 headed by judge Sheikhloo and was sentenced to five years of imprisonment on charges of cooperation with one of the Kurdish parties. The verdict was served on him last week in prison’, the source said.

The political prisoner threatened and summoned in the past couple of weeks during which 63 political and religious prisoners have been transferred from different sections of the Orumiyeh prison to political prisoners’ ward while a number of other political prisoners held in ordinary crimes section.

Orumiyeh Central Prison is one of the few prisons where the Intelligence Ministry has a special office which continuously controls the political prisoners and brings forward charges against them for communicating with the media and human rights organisations.

The director of the above-mentioned office is a family member of Nader Ghazizadeh, the current representative of Orumiyeh in parliament, who has played a prominent role in threatening, exile and even beating political prisoners in the prison of Orumiyeh over the past few years.

In November 2014, a number of political prisoners went on a hunger strike in protest against pressures by the Special Intelligence Office on political prisoners and the non-implementation of the principle of separation of crimes. This strike ended after 33 days, on the condition of “cooperation and assistance of the authorities’. But a new round of pressure on political prisoners began in February and six political prisoners, sentenced to death, were transferred to the prisons of Qazvin, Tabriz and Zanjan. Later three of these prisoners including Sirvan Nazhawi, Ali and Habib Afshari were secretly executed.