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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Dozens of Kurds were arrested and several prisoners were executed in the Kurdish populated areas of Iran in December, according to a report from a human rights group published on Tuesday.
Iranian security forces arrested at least 30 people, including a 16-year-old child, a cleric, and activists in the Kurdish cities of Iran, the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) said in their monthly report on human rights violations in the country.
Four of the detainees were arrested for attending the funeral of the executed Kurdish political prisoner Heidar Ghorbani, while a fifth prisoner was captured for posting about Ghorbani on social media platforms.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly political prisoners, are jailed in Iran on various charges including advocating for democracy and promoting the rights of women, workers, and ethnic minorities.
Zara Mohammadi, a Kurdish-language teacher in Iran, told Rudaw on Monday that she would be handing herself in to the authorities after she was sentenced to five years in prison on national security charges.
At least six executions were reported in the Kurdish provinces, including Ghorbani, who was secretly executed on December 19.
Iran is one of the biggest enforcers of death penalty in the world, with the number of its death sentences branded “troubling” by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman in a March statement.
Ghorbani was arrested in October 2016 on accusations of being involved in the killing of three men affiliated with Iran’s Basij paramilitary forces.
He was sentenced to death in January 2020 by a court in Iran’s Kurdistan province.
According to data collected by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 230 people were executed in 2020. The report added that more than 72 percent of executions were done in secret and not reported by the government.
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