Political prisoners on hunger strike in Sanandaj and Urmia prisons

Iran-HRM – Two political prisoners are on hunger strike in the Central Prison of Urmia and the Prison of Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province. The political prisoners on hunger strike are Shaker Behrouz and Houshmand Alipour.

Shaker Behrouz in on the death row. He went on hunger strike on November 21, 2021, in protest of the intelligence services’ pressure on the plaintiffs in his case to withdraw their consent, thereby allowing the judiciary to go ahead with his execution.

Shaker Behrouzi, 32, is single and comes from Dizej of Urmia.

He was sentenced to death for the murder of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) member, Mamol Mohammadi. This is while there are 12 witnesses from Dizaj Margavar village in northwestern Iran saying Shaker was in their village at the time Mamol Mohammadi was killed.

The family of the victim do not have any complaints against Shaker Behrouz and do not believe that he is the murderer. They have even declared that they are ready to testify about this in any court. But intelligence services have threatened to withdraw the aid granted to the family of the victim, who was an IRGC member, if they do not complain against Shaker Behrouz.

Shaker was also charged for being a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran.
In March 2020, he was sentenced to five years of prison for other charges.

Intelligence services fabricated a new case for him in July 2020. The Second Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia held the trial. On September 10, 2020, the Court informed Mr. Behrouz’s lawyer that he had been sentenced to death on the charge of “armed insurgency and membership in a Kurdish opposition party.”

Houshmand Alipour in the prison of Sanandaj

Political prisoner Houshmand Alipour went on hunger strike on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, in protest of being denied the right to leave. He is also protesting the Intelligence Ministry’s intervention in his case.

Houshmand Alipour was first arrested on August 3, 2018, on the charge of membership in one of the opposition groups.

On November 19, 2018, he was transfered to the Prison of Saqqez, after 110 days of interrogation in the detention center of the Department of Intelligence of Sanandaj.

He was finally transferred to the Prison of Sanandaj in January 2019, after the Revolutionary Court of Sanandaj sentenced him to death.

The following year, on September 15, 2020, the Supreme Court commuted his death sentence to 38 months imprisonment. He was retried after only five days, and his sentence was increased to eight years.

Houshmand Alipour has been in prison for more than three years without a single day of leave.