Iran’s regime hanged Kurdish political prisoner Heidar Ghorbani in Sanandaj prison on Sunday morning. The state-run Tasnim News Agency, run by the Revolutionary Guards Quds Forces, reported that Ghorbani was executed on charges of armed rebellion against the state, murdering three members of the Bassij (which Tasnim described as “Sunni Kurdish civilians”), membership in the Kurdish Democrat Party.
Heidar Ghorbani, 48, who hails from the city of Kamyaran in Kurdistan province, was arrested by agents of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) in 2016 and immediately transferred to Sanandaj Central Prison. The political prisoner was tortured to make incriminating confessions. The regime later broadcasted his confessions on the state-run Press TV.
Ghorbani was sentenced to death in January 2020. In August 2020, Branch 27 of the Iranian regime’s so-called Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. The dossier was then transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Sanandaj for the execution to be carried out. In August 2021, the Iranian regime’s Supreme Court rejected his second request for judicial review.
In an audio file, one of Ghorbani’s former cellmates revealed details about the regime’s brutal torture against him. “There were torture marks on his wrists, on his hips. They had beat him so much that his throat had become infected from screaming from pain… his body was bruised from the torture… They had hung him from the ceiling and beat him,” the prisoner said. “He told me that they had forced him to confess and recorded the confessions. I saw with my own eyes that they took him for torture.”
In recent months, human rights experts and activists have repeatedly warned about Ghorbani’s imminent execution.
In September, Amnesty International raised concern about Ghorbani’s process, from his arrest to his trial and his conditions in prison. Ghorbani was apprehended without an arrest warrant, repeatedly tortured, was held in prolonged solitary confinement and subjected to an enforced disappearance, and denied access to a lawyer during the investigation stage. When he was granted access to lawyers, his lawyers were denied full access to his court file at the trial stage.
Also in September, UN human rights experts called on Iran’s regime to halt the imminent execution of Ghorbani and repeal his death sentence, stressing that he did not receive a fair trial and was tortured during pre-trial detention.
“The Iranian authorities must immediately halt the execution of Heidar Ghorbani and annul the death sentence against him and grant him a retrial in compliance with their international obligations,” the experts said.
The human rights experts reiterated concerns that Ghorbani’s confession “was forced as a result of torture and ill-treatment” and that he was denied access to a lawyer during the investigation.
“In the case of Heidar Ghorbani, many foundational guarantees of fair trial and due process enshrined in international human rights law appear to have been violated,” the experts said. “Allegations of torture and confessions extracted under duress are extremely concerning, as is the fact that these allegations did not lead to any investigation and appear not to have been considered by the Court during his trial.
Ghorbani is the latest victim of the Iranian regime’s long list of crimes against the Kurdish people.
