Iran rejects review of death sentence for Kurdish political prisoner

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran's supreme court on Wednesday rejected a request to review the death sentence of a Kurdish political prisoner accused of armed opposition to the state, according to a Kurdish human rights monitor, putting him at "serious risk" of execution.

Heydar Qorbani was sentenced to death on January 28 on charges of "taking up and using arms against the state" through membership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), an armed opposition group.

The supreme court upheld the death sentence on August 15; Qorbani's lawyer Saleh Nikbakht asked for a judicial review which was rejected on Wednesday, according to the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).

"Although the political prisoner's lawyer intends to protest the rejection of the request again, there is now a serious risk of the death sentence being carried out," the rights group said.

Qorbani, from the city of Kamyaran in Iran's Kurdistan province, was detained in October 2016 after several members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed close to his hometown. He was kept in Ministry of Intelligence detention for several months, where he was tortured. 

Iranian government's English-language Press TV channel aired confessions made by Qorbani in March 2018 for being an accessory to murder. He was found guilty of that charge by Branch One of the criminal court in Sanandaj late in 2019, and sentenced to a total of 90 years in jail plus 200 lashes.

"All the charges attributed to Heydar Qorbani are extremely illegal," Salih Nikbakht, Qorbani's lawyer told Rudaw on Wednesday night via Skype from Tehran.

"In all the interrogations, investigations and trials Heydar has been put through, he has reiterated that he had no connection with any political party. There wasn't even any evidence to prove or find him guilty."

"It is very unfortunate that there is blatant oppression against the Kurdish prisoners," Nikbakht said. "Kurdish prisoners have no one to defend them in the judiciary, compared to other people."

"He was accused of assisting them. It was made clear at the court in Sanandaj that he had not carried arms, nor was he involved in the murder."

Since the heightening of US-Iran tensions and re-imposition of US sanctions on Tehran in 2018, Iranian authorities have started tightening the noose on labor activists, journalists, satirists, environmentalists, anti-death penalty campaigners, and researchers, detained them in droves and sentencing some in trials whose fairness has been questioned.

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.

Earlier this week, Iran handed another Kurdish political prisoner a death sentence for membership with a Kurdistan Region-based opposition group and murder of a paramilitary force member, despite offer of immunity by Iranian authorities.

Wrestler Navid Afkari, 27, was earlier this week secretly hanged by Iranian authorities, despite international calls to stay his execution. Amnesty International called Afkari's execution a "travesty of justice".

Extracting confessions under duress is commonly used by Iranian authorities to establish guilt. Between 2009 and 2019, Iranian state media broadcast forced confessions from least 355 individuals, according to a report published in June by Justice4Iran, a London-based human rights organization monitoring abuses in the country.

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