Tortured and in Deteriorating Health, Woman Activist in Iran Should be Immediately Released

CHRI – Lawyer Who Tried to Defend Her Arrested and Also Tortured

Grave concerns are mounting for a young woman imprisoned in Iran, who has been denied counsel since the onset of her initial imprisonment, repeatedly subjected to torture, and denied proper medical treatment.

“Sakineh’s ‘crimes’ are numerous in the eyes of the repressive Islamic Republic: being a young woman, an ethnic minority, daring to raise her voice against state repression,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

“She should be immediately released to tend to her deteriorating health,” he added. “Her situation, which mirrors the cases of countless other political prisoners in Iran, highlights the urgent need for international action to hold the Islamic Republic accountable for its gross violations of human rights,” he added.

Sakineh Parvaneh, a 35-year-old Iranian Kurdish political activist hailing from Quchan in the Khorasan Razavi province of northeast Iran, has endured incarceration in multiple Iranian prisons infamous for their deplorable living conditions, and tortured in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as the Intelligence Ministry, since September 2019.

Presently, she is serving a 7.5-year sentence imposed on her following a sham trial, where she was denied access to legal counsel and the ability to prepare a defense.

Long History of Unlawful Imprisonments, Torture

Parvaneh was most recently arrested in April 2023, just after her release from Mashhad Central Prison on February 15, 2023. This release followed the state’s purported general amnesty, which was followed by the re-imprisonment of many political prisoners shortly thereafter.

Previously, she had been imprisoned since September 2019 and subjected to torture in state custody during transfers between prisons.

Ethnic minorities in Iran face institutionalized discrimination in the judicial system, often receiving disproportionately severe prison and death sentences.

According to Parvaneh’s own account in a letter obtained by CHRI, security agents detained her in the fall of 2019 while visiting relatives in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, and transferred her to the Iranian border, where she endured torture.

In the letter detailing her case, she recounted being severely beaten and having her toenails broken. She resisted pressure to write and sign a false statement denouncing Kurdish parties and claiming voluntary surrender to Iranian forces, but her captors fabricated the statement and coerced her fingerprint onto it.

Parvaneh spent 10 days in detention centers in Marivan and Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, before being transferred to Tehran’s Evin Prison.

In the letter, she emphasized that she was physically and psychologically tortured during detention in wards 2-A and 209, controlled by the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence respectively, as well as Evin’s Women’s Ward.

Lawyer Who Tried to Defend her Also Imprisoned

During Parvaneh’s initial arrest in 2019, Payam Derafshan, the lawyer attempting to represent her, was also arrested on fabricated national security charges and tortured in state custody.

A source familiar with Parvaneh’s case informed CHRI, “Parvaneh was Derafshan’s final client before his arrest. When Derafshan attempted to follow up on the case, he was too incapacitated by torture to speak. Despite his request for legal representation for his client due to his own prosecution, no lawyer was appointed for her.”

According to a source with detailed knowledge of the case, in April 2020, Sakineh Parvaneh was transferred to Qarchak Prison in south Tehran for expressing dissent through writing and chanting slogans in Evin Prison. After enduring four days of solitary confinement, she was then transferred to Aminabad psychiatric hospital.

On July 4, 2020, Parvaneh was once again transferred to Evin Prison with visible bruises on her body. A month later, she was sentenced to an additional two years in prison for allegedly “creating disturbance inside prison,” as reported by the source speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.

In November 2020, she was moved from Evin to prisons in Quchan and Mashhad cities, located in the Khorasan Razavi province. During her time in Quchan and Mashhad prisons, Parvaneh was repeatedly taken to the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization’s detention center in Mashhad where she endured physical and psychological torture in attempts to coerce confessions, according to the source.

To protest against the abuse, Parvaneh resorted to multiple hunger strikes.

In May 2020, after another trial in which she was denied counsel and due process, at Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, presided by Judge Iman Afshari, Parvaneh was sentenced to five years in prison and banned from political group membership for three years.

Despite being released in February 2019, Parvaneh was rearrested in April 2023 in Mashhad by IRC intelligence agents. Following 10 days of interrogation at the detention center, she was transferred to Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison.

The purported “evidence” presented by the IRGC’s intelligence organization against Parvaneh was a video on social media allegedly showing her at a memorial for Ali Mozaffari, who was killed amid major anti-state protests in Quchan during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022, which erupted across Iran in response to the killing in state custody of a young Kurdish woman just three days after her arrest for alleged hijab violations.

Denied the ability to prepare a defense, on November 6, 2023, Branch 1 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Mashhad sentenced her to 7.5 years in prison on charges including “propaganda against the state,” “assembly and collusion against national security,” and “insulting the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” This sentence was upheld on appeal.

“A lawyer in Mashhad had agreed to represent Parvaneh in the trial, but the presiding judges in Branch 1 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court and Branch 35 of the Appeals Court prevented him from defending her,” revealed the source.

Denied Critically Needed Medical Treatment

Parvaneh suffered harsh conditions during her time in Vakilabad Prison, endangering her health, the source added. Despite her deteriorating physical and psychological condition, prison authorities denied her access to medical treatment for respiratory and heart diseases in December 2023.

In addition, authorities in Mashhad restricted her phone calls to be conducted only in the presence of guards, ordering her to speak only in Persian, rather than her mother tongue, Kurdish.

Such actions violate international agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which require the Islamic Republic to recognize and protect mother tongues.

Despite these obligations, the government only permits mother languages to be taught and spoken in restricted circumstances and routinely intimidates and imprisons mother language activists.

On April 3, 2024, Parvaneh was transferred from Vakilabad to Evin Prison for unknown reasons.

“Sakineh’s case epitomizes the reality of Iran’s judicial system, where basic rights are brutally discarded at the bidding of the intelligence and security agencies,” said Ghaemi.

“As an extremely vulnerable member of society, Parvaneh lacks representation or defense against the egregious rights violations she continues to endure,” he added.

“Speaking her name, sharing her story, demanding her release, whether you’re a politician or an average citizen, is imperative,” he said.

Read this report in Persian

This report was made possible from donations by readers like you. Help us continue our mission by making a tax-deductible donation.