ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian Authorities on Tuesday arrested a Kurdish citizen from West Azerbaijan Province and transferred him to prison to serve a 10-year sentence. This comes as Tehran intensifies its repression of dissent marked by sweeping arrests and arbitrary detentions, accelerated judicial proceedings and lengthy prison sentences.
Iranian security forces on Tuesday detained Mansour Karbalai, a 30-year-old Kurdish citizen and resident of Sarchnar village in Miandoab County and transferred him to Bukan central prison to begin serving his sentence, according to the Kurdistan News Agency (Kurdpa).
Karbalai was sentenced in October 2025 to “10 years and one day” on charges of "acting against national security” and “membership in an opposition Kurdish party” following his initial detention in June 2022 and was temporarily released on heavy bail both times.
Karbalai’s arrests in 2025 in 2022 occurred alongside five other Kurdish citizens who were each sentenced to 10 years and 1 day in prison on the same charges, as well as one citizen who was handed a death sentence, and were transferred to an interrogation center where they underwent torture and force confessions before being temporarily released on heavy bail pending trial.
Following the US and Israel’s aerial campaign on Iran in late February, Iranian authorities and security forces accelerated arbitrary detentions, arresting more than 6,000 people including protesters, journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and members of ethnic and religious minorities from February to May, according to an Amnesty International report, in addition to killing thousands of protestors.
Prisoners face uncertainty over the risk of their prison terms being converted to execution notices without warning. Hengaw documented seven out of 67 executions carried out in July having been carried out in secret, without prior notice to detainees and families.
According to a monthly report by Oslo-based Hengaw organization for human rights, 67 prisoners were executed in July, in which nine were political prisoners executed for “offenses” such as “waging war against god” and espionage.
“Corruption on earth” and “armed rebellion" as well as a host of “national security offenses” are offenses the Iranian Revolutionary court considers punishable by death.
United Nation experts on August, 2026, issued a press release calling on Iranian authorities to put a stop to escalating arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment and arbitrary executions of ethnic minorites, noting Kurds and Baluchis.
Detainees have routinely been forced to confess to fabricated charges under torture, including confessions being broadcasted on state media, practices which violate the absolute prohibition of torture and undermine the right to a fair trial, the UN said.
