Kurdish Opposition Member on Death Row Returned to Prison after IRGC Interrogation

Kurdish Opposition Member on Death Row Returned to Prison after IRGC Interrogation

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA)- After ten days of interrogation at the detention center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kamal Hassan Ramezan was transferred back to Urmia Central prison on Thursday, August 23, 2018, where he awaits execution.

The IRGC was interrogating Ramezan, 33, about his prison “activism,” a source familiar with the case said. Their interrogation adds to a list of aggressive inquiries that authorities have levelled at Ramezan.

First arrested near Urmia in July 2014 by IRGC forces, Ramezan underwent interrogation for four months on the charge of Moharebeh (“enmity against God”). Urmia court authorities then charged Ramezan, who is of Kurdish descent, with another count of Moharebeh for his alleged affiliation with a Kurdish opposition group, and transferred him to Urmia Central Prison.

While awaiting trial for the above charges, he was coerced and tortured into providing a televised confession, securing a guilty verdict in Branch 2 of the Urmia Revolutionary Court on August 14, 2015, where Judge Sheikhlou sentenced him to 10 years and one day in prison.

In 2016 Ramezan was targeted again, interrogated as a suspect in the 2006 murder of an IRGC member in Urmia. Despite an alibi of not having been in the country at the time of the murder, he was tried and sentenced to death in absentia by Branch 3 of Urmia Revolutionary Court on May 20th, 2017, and has remained in prison since.

hrana.org