Family of Kurdish political prisoner Shaker Baghi traveled from the city of Van in Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey) to Iran’s Kashmar prison to meet their son following permission by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj on 14 December, but they had been harassed by the prison officials before meeting their son, a reliable Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) source said.
Although the family had permission, an official of the prison authorities had objected to the family visit, the KHRN source said.
“Allowing this family visit for this particular prisoner is betrayal of our [Iranian soldiers’] martyrs killed by the political party of which the prisoner was a member,” the KHRN source quoted the prison official as saying to the family before preventing them from entering the prison thorough the main gates.
The prisoner’s family had to wait for several hours outside the prison gates and it was following repeated phone calls by officials of the Sanandaj court that the prison official finally allowed the family to meet their political prisoner son, but only for over an hour.
The family had the right to meet their son for at least three hours sine they had traveled from a very long distance, another country, according to the law.
The political prisoner’s father is an elderly of 90 years of age, and this was the first time he saw his son after 20 years because his son had been absent in the family due to his political activities.
Political prisoner Shaker Baghi originally comes from the city of Van in Northern Kurdistan (southeast Turkey).
The Iranian intelligence security gunmen had arrested him on the road between the cities of Sanandaj and Mariwan on 10 March 2008.
The security gunmen had hit his head with the butt of their weapons and he had immediately fainted at the time of his arrest.
He was then transferred to the interrogation detention of the intelligence offices in the cities of Sanandaj and Kermanshah.
The Islamic Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj sentenced him to 30 years in prison in exile in Kashmar pf Khorasane Razavi province after months of torture in pre-trial detentions of the intelligence offices in both Sanandaj and Kermanshah.
Shaker Baghi´s lawyer appealed the sentence to the Appeal Court of the province, but the court confirmed the sentence without considering the defendant’s right to appeal.
Baghi e was transferred to Kashmar prison in 2010.
