Kurdish prisoners in Iran transferred to ‘unknown location’ at the risk of execution: watchdogs

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two Kurdish prisoners are at the risk of execution after they were transferred to an unknown location from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) detention center in Urmia in West Azerbaijan province, human rights watchdogs reported on Tuesday.

Mohedin Ebrahimi, a 40-year-old from Oshnavieh in West Azerbaijan province was arrested after being shot and injured in November 2017 by Iranian forces. He was transferred to IRGC intelligence detention center in Urmia, where he was “interrogated and tortured,” Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.

Ebrahimi was first sentenced in August 2018 on charges in participation of opposition parties, and then again in January 2020 on the same charges.

The other prisoner, Mohedin Tazaward, was arrested in October 2018 by Iranian intelligence and sentenced to death on charges of “membership of Salafi groups.” He was also transferred to the Urmia detention center following interrogation.

Kurdish human rights watchdogs reported that both were transferred to “an unknown location” on Tuesday without an explanation, noting that they are at risk of being executed.

Iran subjugates many of its detainees to enforced disappearances, holding them in undisclosed locations and hiding their fates and whereabouts from their families, a 2021 Amnesty International report said.

Iran is also one of the biggest death penalty enforcers in the world, with its number of death sentences branded “troubling” by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman in a March statement.

More than 230 people were executed in 2020, data collected by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) showed. The report added that more than 72% of executions were done in secret and not reported by the government.

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