Three Kurdish political prisoners at Miandoab Prison went on hunger strike on April 8, 2018 in protest to being deprived of the right to temporary leave(Furlough) by the Miandoab Prosecutor’s Office and the Orumiyeh Intelligence Bureau. They ended their strikes after the prison authorities promised them to take positive steps towards fulfilling their demands.
Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has identified these political prisoners as Halmut Abdollahi, Milad Abdi and Saeed Siah.
The source added that ‘after handing the notice of their hunger strike to the guard, the head of the prison ordered all three prisoners to be transferred to the quarantine of the prison. However, following a telephone call with the Miandoab Prosecutor’s Office, the head of prison promised these prisoners to take positive actions toward fulfilling their demands within the next two weeks.
According to the source, following the promise of the Prosecutor’s Assistance, the three prisoners temporarily terminated their hunger strike at the request of the prison chief and all three of them were transferred to Ward 3 of the prison.
All these three prisons (along with three other Kurdish citizens known as Kamal Ahmadinejad, M(Satum) Tahazadeh and Soleiman Kari) were sentenced to 8 months of imprisonment by Miandoab Revolutionary Court in late August 2015 on charges of cooperation with Kurdish political parties and 15 years of imprisonment for murder of Hashem Zeinali (a member of Mobilisation Force) by Branch 1 of Miandoab Criminal Court following an indictment filed by Miandoab Prosecutor’s Office. The prisoners were served with notice of 8 months imprisonment sentence at a time when neither of them had an opportunity to contest it. However, one of the prisoners managed to contest the 8 months imprisonment sentence and he was acquitted of the charges by the Court of Appeals.
The Criminal Court issued an absolute decree despite witnesses and the contest statements of their lawyer confirming that neither of the concerned prisoners were present at the Place where the incident leading to the death of the victim had happened. Kamal Ahmadinejad was sentenced to death while the other five prisoners were accused of involvement in the murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Later on, Four of the prisoners named “Helmut Abdollahi”, “Milad Abdi”, “Saeed Siahi” and “M (Saturn) Tahazadeh” were released from prison on a bail of three hundred million Tomans. But late February last year the Supreme Court of Iran affirmed their decree and they were re-arrested and taken to the Miandoab’s prison.
The informed source continued that the dossier of each of these six prisoners (prepared by Intelligence Bureau) is about four hundred pages although both the evidence and witnesses confirm that they are innocent. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the decree of the Criminal Court without holding any hearing.
