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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A Kurdish language teacher and social activist sentenced to five years in prison in Iran on national security charges has denied the accusations against her, saying intelligence services gave insufficient evidence to the appeals court.
Zahra Mohammadi was sentenced to five years in prison by a Sanandaj appeals court this week. Arrested in May 2019, she had initially been sentenced to 10 years in jail before launching an appeal, where prosecutors had little evidence against her, she told Rudaw’s Fuad Raheem on Sunday.
“After I was sentenced to 10 years in prison, I appealed the decision and the Court of Appeals asked the intelligence ministry to provide evidence against me,” Mohammadi said. “Intelligence gave no evidence to the court of appeal. After two and a half months, at the court’s request, they brought a single picture of me attending the funeral of Jalal Malakshah.”
Malakshah, a Kurdish poet and political activist, died in October.
In a post to Instagram on Saturday, Mohammadi said, “the five year sentence by appeal court without evidence, reason, and with no consideration to the truth is utter injustice.”
She said that she was initially accused of having links to Kurdish parties, but those charges were later dropped and she was convicted of “establishing a committee and group that is against the stability and security of the system.”
Mohammadi is director of the Nojin Cultural Association, an organization whose work includes teaching Kurdish language and literature. At the time of her arrest, the association was teaching Kurdish to hundreds of children in and around Sanandaj, in Iran’s western Kurdistan province.
She was released on a bail of 700 million Iranian tomans (approximately $27,000) in December 2019 after her case gained worldwide attention and the support of Amnesty International.
Mohammadi “has been accused of co-operating with Kurdish opposition groups and charged with national security offences for her peaceful activities empowering members of Iran’s marginalized Kurdish community, including through teaching the Kurdish language,” Amnesty International wrote in its appeal for her release.
She denied having in any way threatened the national security of Iran and claimed that she will appeal the latest decision.
“In the Court of Appeals, two judges approve the sentence, [but] the second judge has not signed it,” she said. “In my case file it clearly states that I am innocent of forming groups that would hurt Iran's security,” saying there were “many contradictions” in the case against her.
Nojin Cultural Association called the court’s ruling “a clear manifestation of an anti-Kurdish dominant discourse” from state institutions.
Since the heightening of US-Iran tensions and re-imposition of US sanctions in 2018, Iranian authorities have tightened the noose on labor activists, journalists, satirists, environmentalists, anti-death penalty campaigners, and researchers, detaining them in droves and sentencing some in trials whose fairness has been questioned.
Tens of thousands of people are held as political prisoners in Iranian jails, for 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.
In 2019, at least 2,000 people were arrested in Iran for joining armed Kurdish forces or for activism deemed suspicious, according to data provided to Rudaw by KHRN founder Rebin Rahmani. In 2020, at least 400 people were arrested, Rahmani said.
Since the beginning of 2021, at least 128 people have been arrested in Iran’s Kurdish-majority areas, Arsalan Yarahmedi, director of the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, told Rudaw English on Sunday.
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