Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, Lawyer of Hossein Kamangar: My Client Has Been Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison Without Any Evidence

The lawyer of an imprisoned civil activist says his client has been sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Revolutionary Court on charges of “membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK)” despite the absence of any evidence supporting his conviction in the case file.

Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, the defense lawyer of Hossein Kamangar, a civil activist and Kurdish citizen from Kamyaran city, told Voice of America that the latest court session for Hossein Kamangar took place more than two years after his arrest on February 16 of last year in the first branch of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court. According to Mr. Nikbakht, the judge issued his verdict regarding Mr. Kamangar’s charge of membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) on March 18, and this verdict was delivered to him on Saturday, March 28, in the presence of this judicial lawyer at the Revolutionary Court.

According to this judicial lawyer, this verdict is not final and he can file an appeal within 20 days from the date of delivery. He emphasized that since the issued verdict exceeds ten years of imprisonment, this objection will be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

According to Mr. Nikbakht, Hossein Kamangar has been sentenced to prison despite being arrested in 2015 and 2016 on similar charges of membership in the PJAK party of Kurdistan and ultimately being acquitted both times. According to this judicial lawyer, Mr. Kamangar, after the charges were dismissed and his release, filed a complaint, and after reviewing his case, he was awarded compensation for damages caused by unlawful and unjustified detention for 7 months.

This judicial lawyer says that when this civil activist pursued his compensation claim in December 2018, he was again prosecuted on similar but more serious charges such as “rebellion” and participation in the assassination of an ambulance driver for the Red Crescent Society in Kamyaran, which led to his 15-year prison sentence.

Voice of America had previously reported that Hossein Kamangar was arrested on December 6, 2018, along with several other environmental and civil activists by agents of the Sanandaj Information Office in Kamyaran with physical violence and transferred to the Information detention facility in Sanandaj.

At that time, the deputy for political, security, and law enforcement affairs of the Kurdistan Province governorate accused these individuals of having a role in the killing of an ambulance driver in June of that year and said that these environmental activists were arrested in the course of investigations to identify the ambulance driver’s killers.

Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht continued his conversation with Voice of America, saying that before the last court session, he was able to take on the legal representation of Hossein Kamangar’s case and upon reviewing the file, he realized that there was no evidence in the file indicating “this political prisoner’s membership in the PJAK party of Kurdistan or participation in the assassination of the ambulance driver of the Red Crescent Society in Kamyaran.”

He further stated that the basis for proving the crime and the evidence in the file consisted of statements from at least 11 other co-defendants against Mr. Kamangar. According to this judicial lawyer, “in accordance with the opinions of the country’s religious scholars and senior officials as well as the law, the testimony of accused individuals against other accused persons cannot serve as evidence for convicting a person.”

According to this judicial lawyer, on the other hand, most of these individuals have also claimed after their release that they made their statements in prison and under abnormal conditions against Hossein Kamangar and were forced to testify falsely.

The U.S. State Department has repeatedly condemned violent conduct and widespread suppression of protesters in various cases, as well as the repeated and continuous violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by the Islamic Republic.