Poor Physical Condition of Qader Mohammadzadeh, Kurdish Political Prisoner, After 35 Days of Hunger Strike
According to reports from several human rights media outlets, the physical condition of Qader Mohammadzadeh, a Kurdish political prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for the past 35 days in protest of the Mahabad prosecutor’s refusal to approve his furlough request, has been reported as poor.
One of the family members of this political prisoner, announcing the inappropriate physical and health condition of Qader Mohammadzadeh to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, stated that the court and Yazd prison officials have approved Mohammadzadeh’s furlough request, and a bail of one billion tomans has been set and handed over to the Mahabad judiciary. However, “Mehrab Akbarpour, the Mahabad prosecutor,” has opposed granting the furlough by labeling the case as a security matter.
According to this informed source, Mr. Mohammadzadeh stated in his last phone contact with his family that although he has become very weak as a result of the hunger strike, he is not willing to break his hunger strike until he achieves his minimum demand – which is the right to furlough after enduring 16 years of imprisonment.
This political prisoner, who has been spending his sentence in Urmia and Yazd prisons for the past 16 years without even a single day of furlough, began a hunger strike starting August 31st.
Kaveh Kermanshahi, a member of the management of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, who believes that granting furlough is the minimum right this political prisoner can be granted, says: “The Mahabad prosecutor’s decision has no legal justification and is only applied based on his personal opinion.”
Kaveh Kermanshahi accused judicial officials in regions such as Kurdistan of using “extra-legal authorities” to place “prisoners and families” in difficult and torturous conditions and said that these pressures and behaviors are “more severe in the case of prisoners who cannot afford to have a lawyer.”
Qader Mohammadzadeh was arrested on December 11, 2005, by the Information Bureau forces in Boukan and was sentenced to death by the Mahabad Revolutionary Court on the charge of “moharebeh” (enmity against God) through membership in the Komala party. Although this sentence was changed to 20 years of imprisonment and exile to Yazd Central Prison in the provincial court of appeals.
According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, this political prisoner was also sentenced in another case in November 2010 on the charge of “contact with foreign media” by the First Branch of the Mahabad Islamic Revolutionary Court to an additional 6 months of imprisonment.
Source: Voice of America
