“At noon on Thursday, June 18, 2020, Kurdish political prisoner Kamal Hassan Ramazan was taken back to the prison after spending five days in a security detention centre in Orumiyeh. The details and reason for this transfer are not yet known.”, an informed source told Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
After transferring this political prisoner to one of the detention centres in Orumiyeh, Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, the lawyer of this political prisoner, told KHRN that “Since my client’s prison sentence is nearly complete, I was told in a telephone conversation with the Office of Enforcement of orders a few days ago that there was no problem with his release. The usual procedure for releasing prisoners is to inform the person that he or she is being released and is allowed to collect his or her clothing and equipment. However, Kamal Hassan Ramadan was not advised to do so and this is what worries me.”
The lawyer also referred to the sentence of “Moharebeh” and the death sentence attributed to Kamal Hassan Ramadan due to the similarity of names. He urged human rights activists and organizations not to raise the issue as if he had been taken for enforcement of the sentence since another trial must take place even if the authorities still insist that the sentence of Hassan Ramadan must be enforced because this person has been sentenced to death in absentia. He also mentioned that if another trial is held, the sentence will certainly not be carried out.
Kamal Hassan Ramazan, a Syrian citizen, was arrested by security forces on 28 August 2014 and initially sentenced to 10 years in prison for membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The sentence was reduced to seven years in prison per the law of Submission to the Verdict because the defendant did not contest the verdict.
The political prisoner has been transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Orumiyeh several times over the past few years, despite the finalisation of his sentence. In response to an inquiry by the Orumiyeh Court into the cause of the explosion at a border checkpoint in 2011, the Orumiyeh Intelligence Office introduced Kamal Hassan Ramazan as the defendant due to the similarity of his name with another person named “Kamal Sur”. In May 2017, he was summoned by the office of Implementation of the sentence in Orumiyeh Central Prison and the death verdict served on him. This sentence was issued in absentia in November 2011 by Branch 3 of the Revolutionary Court for “Kamal Sur”.
Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht had previously told the KHRN that “according to Kamal Hassan Ramazan’s identity and documents, which were also presented to the court, he was almost 16 years old at the time of the explosion at the Erbil border checkpoint and could not have been a commander.”
