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IRAN: KURDISH POLITICAL PRISONER EXECUTED IN MIANDOAB
June 14, 2015: A well-known Kurdish political prisoner was executed in Miandoab’s Prison, reported the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
Mansour Arvand, a 39-year-old former wrestler from Mahabad, had been sentenced in 2012 for "Moharebeh" (enmity with God) and “propaganda against the system and membership of Kurdish Democratic Party.”
In 2011, Arvand was reportedly arrested in his home in Mahabad, a Kurdish city in northwest of Iran. He spent months in custody of the Iranian Intelligence (Etelaat). A year later, he was accused of collaboration with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran. He denied the allegations but in 2012 was sentenced to death by the Mahabad Islamic Revolutionary Court, Branch 1.
Arvand was transferred in 2014 to Mahabad Prison and was allegedly informed that his sentence had been reduced to life imprisonment. In May, Arvand was transferred from Mahabad Prison to Miandoab Prison without explanation, according to opposition reports.
On 15 June, Arvand’s parentes were called into the prison and informed that their son was hanged the day before, according to the Human Rights Defenders Association of Kurdistan.
According to the NCRI, "during the four years of his imprisonment in various prisons, including the intelligence prison of Mahabad and Evin Prison, he underwent the most severe tortures and was suffering from various illnesses because of that, including renal infection.”
Mansour Arvand was among the Kurdish political prisoners who in November 2014 staged a hunger strike lasted over a month at Orumieh Central Prison in protest to attempts by the regime to dissolve the political prisoners’ ward and transfer them to the ordinary prisoners’ ward. (Sources: NCRI, 15/06/2015; rudaw.net, 17/06/2015)
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