A/HRC/25/61
realized that two people were watching her. She thought this was probably because they
wanted to arrest her younger son Amir. She went home and warned him, and told him she
would go to her mother’s house. Within 50 meters from that house, two gentlemen with
smoky eyeglasses approached her and grabbed her, one from each side, and told her to go
to a side street. While they were walking, she was insulting them and trying to make them
angry. At the same time, she took off her shoes and tried to flee. When she began running,
one grabbed her overcoat and stopped her. She threw dirt into one of their eyes and ran into
a public square. She ran into a store and even though the shopkeeper was trying to kick her
out, she stayed and called her family and told her she was going to go to her brother-inlaw’s place, 20 minutes from Sanandaj.
She stayed at her brother’s house for two days. Her husband and son Amir joined her there,
and one morning, at 4am, they fled to the Suleiymaniyeh in the Kurdish Regional
Government, Iraq.
Amjad Hossein Panahi
Kurdish rights activist
Mr. Amjad Hossein Panahi works for the Defense of Political and Civil Prisoners in Iran
(particularly Kurdistan) and the Union of Families of Political Prisoners in Kurdistan.
In addition to the two organizations for which he works, there are also organizations in Iran
that work nonviolently for the protection of Kurdish rights, although all are operating
illegally.
He noted that dozens of Kurdish political prisoners remain are on death row with sentences
confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Mr. “Sharif”
Source close to Kurdish political prisoners on death row
Four of ten remaining Kurdish prisoners are still on death row Jamshid Dehgani, his
younger brother, Jahangir Dehgani, Hamed Ahmadi, and Kamal Molayee. All were accused
of involvement in the murder of a Friday Imam, and all have suffered forced confession and
a lack of due process and forced confession.
One of the prisoners is a child and is married. They claim that they have not had any
contacts with Al-Qaeda, Wahabbis, or other extremists groups, despite the fact that the
Government has charged them with this. They are “simply Kurds from Sanandaj.” They
were supposedly arrested for events affiliated with a Salafist named Sheikh al-Islam, but in
reality they were arrested “before his activities.”
They have been kept in solitary confinement, and apparently endure psychological and
physical torture. Their trial did not last more than ten minutes. Six of the original ten have
been executed already. The rest are reportedly in bad condition or sick, including one who
has convulsions and must take 21 pills per day.
86
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