Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, Hossein Kamangar's lawyer: My client has been sentenced to 15 years in prison without any evidence

The lawyer of an imprisoned civil activist says that his client was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Revolutionary Court on charges of "membership in the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK)" even though there is no evidence in the case to support his conviction.

Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, the defense attorney for Hossein Kamangar, a imprisoned civil activist and Kurdish citizen from Kamyaran County, told VOA that Hossein Kamangar’s last court session was held more than two years after his arrest on February 17, 2018, at Branch 1 of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court. According to Mr. Nikbakht, the judge in the case issued his verdict on the charge of Mr. Kamangar’s membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) on February 17, 2018, and the verdict was delivered to him on Saturday, April 27, 2018, in the presence of the attorney at the Revolutionary Court.

According to the lawyer, this verdict is not final and he can appeal within 20 days of the verdict being announced. He emphasized that since the sentence is more than ten years in prison, this appeal will be heard in the Supreme Court.

According to Mr. Nikbakht, Hossein Kamangar was sentenced to prison despite being arrested in 2015 and 2016 on charges of membership in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PJAK) and ultimately acquitted of the charges both times. According to this lawyer, after rejecting the charges and being released, Mr. Kamangar filed a complaint and after his case was reviewed, he was awarded compensation for the damage caused by his illegal and unjustified detention for 7 months.

The lawyer says that when this civil activist took action to claim his damages, he was prosecuted again in January 2018 on similar but more serious charges, such as "rebellion" and participating in the assassination of an ambulance driver of the Halal Ahmar community in Kamyaran city, which led to his arrest and sentence of 15 years in prison.

Voice of America had previously reported that Hossein Kamangar was arrested on January 5, 2018, along with a number of other environmental and civil activists, using physical violence by agents of the Sanandaj Intelligence Department in Kamyaran, and transferred to the Intelligence Detention Center in Sanandaj.

The deputy head of political, security, and law enforcement for the Kurdistan Governorate at the time accused these individuals of somehow having played a role in the murder of an ambulance driver in July of that year and said that these environmental activists were arrested in the continuation of the investigation to identify the killers of the ambulance driver.

Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht continued his conversation with VOA, saying that he was able to represent Hossein Kamangar's case before the last court session, and after studying the case, he realized that there was no evidence in the case that "this political prisoner was a member of the Kurdistan PJAK party or participated in the assassination of the Red Crescent Society ambulance driver in Kamyaran."

He further added that the reason for committing the crime and the documents in the case were the statements of at least 11 other co-defendants of Mr. Kamangar. According to the lawyer, "according to the opinions of the country's scholars and high-ranking officials, as well as according to the law, the testimony of the accused against other accused" cannot be the reason for the conviction of an individual.

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

The US State Department has repeatedly and on various occasions condemned the violent confrontations and widespread repression of protesters, as well as the repeated and persistent violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by the Islamic Republic.