Four Kurdish Citizens Sentenced to Four Years in Prison

Four Kurdish citizens named “Himan Mohammadian,” “Yadgar Jafari,” “Yaseen Karimi,” and “Pouria Naseri” have been sentenced to a total of four years in prison by the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court.

According to a report by the human rights website Hengaw, these four citizens from Sanandaj were each sentenced on Tuesday, October 30, by the first branch of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court to one year in prison on charges of “propaganda against the system through cooperation with one of the opposition Kurdish parties to the Iranian government.”

According to the report, these citizens were arrested on July 22, coinciding with the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Abdolrahman Ghassemlou, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, by the Intelligence Ministry, and after two days were temporarily released on bail until the end of legal proceedings.

The human rights website Hengaw cited the reason for the arrest of these individuals as “wearing Kurdish clothing” on the anniversary of Dr. Abdolrahman Ghassemlou’s assassination.

In early July of this year, “Mohammad Amin Kanani,” a Kurdish activist from the village of “Takhte” in the Sanandaj area, was sentenced by the first branch of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court to five years in prison on charges of “cooperation with one of the opposition Kurdish parties to the Iranian government.”

Amnesty International in December of last year called 2018 a “year of shame” for the Islamic Republic and announced that in that year more than seven thousand people, including protest participants, students, journalists, women’s rights activists, environmental activists, labor activists, and ethnic and religious minority rights activists, were arrested in Iran.

Source: Voice of America