Convicted in 2017 of moharebeh, or waging war against God, Saber Sheikh Abdullah and Diako Rasoulzadeh are accused of membership with the Komala Party, an armed Kurdish opposition group, and orchestrating a 2010 bombing in Mahabad. Advocates argue the charges are based on coerced confessions obtained through torture.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRC) has expressed concern over the "sudden transfer of these two political prisoners," suspecting authorities are moving forward with the capital punishment.
"We are calling on the Iranian government to immediately stop this imminent decision of executing the prisoners, because they have been charged with a crime they never committed and that they had initially confessed under torture " Rebin Rahmani, a KHRC board member, told Rudaw English.
The two prisoners were arrested by security forces at their homes in Mahabad in March 2014. They were later transferred to the Intelligence Detention Centre in Urmia.
The two prisoners were sentenced to death along with Hossein Osmani, another political prisoner, in October 2017 by the First Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia. Their verdicts were later approved by the Supreme Court for execution in late October 2017.
"The three political prisoners were pressured and heavily tortured for a year at the Intelligence Detention Centre to confess to participation in Mahabad bombing in September 2010. Finally, all the three prisoners were forced to make confessions in a TV program on Press TV," stated Rahmani, who notes the men were deprived of a lawyer prior to their conviction.
Abdullah, Rasoulzadeh, and Osmani vehemently denied their accusations during the trial, and told the court that they were tortured and forced to confess.
Describing the court verdict as "surprising," Rahmani says that in mid-May of 2014 the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence had publicly accused another three perpetrators of the bombing.
"The Iranian government has erased all documents, links, and traces of the statements they had issued concerning the previous perpetrators," he added.
In late September, Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour, the top ground force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced that the "key masterminds" of Mahabad bombing had been killed.
Tens of thousands of political prisoners are jailed in Iran over various charges including advocating for democracy and promoting women's or workers' rights.
Ethnic minority groups including Kurds and Azeris are disproportionately detained and more harshly sentenced for acts of political dissidence, according to a July 2019 report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
Late last month, Amnesty International called on Iranian authorities to reveal the details of Hedayat Abdollahpour, a Kurdish Iranian prisoner's secret execution and return his body to his family, days after relatives received his official death certificate.
Since the re-imposition of US sanctions and the heightening of tensions, authorities in Iran have started tightening the noose on labor activists, journalists, satirists, environmentalists, anti-death penalty campaigners, and researchers, who have been detained in droves, with some sentenced in trials whose fairness has been questioned.
