The Branch Three of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh has sentenced civilians Nasim Namazi, Vafa Hanareh, Aram Omari Berdiani, Rahman Parhazou and Mansour Rasouli to death on charges of “participation in intelligence cooperation and espionage for Israel” over the past few weeks.
The court also sentenced five other civilians, Kamran Hanareh, Fakhroddin Doudkanlou Milan, Ashkan Osmannezhad Ganduk, Hassan Omarpour, and Amir Moshtagh Gangachin, to ten years in prison on the same charge.
“The ten civilians that come from Orumiyeh were arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh over a period of several months, between the fall of 2021 and early 2022, and were physically tortured for months in solitary cells of the ministry on the accusation of ‘participation in intelligence cooperation and espionage for Israel'”, an informed source told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
Forced to “confess” under “torture and threats to detain and rape their family members”, they denied all allegations of the security agencies during their trial, saying that they were “tortured” during their interrogation, the source said.
According to the source, “Mansour Rasouli, was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Orumiyeh. Last year, the media outlets of the Islamic Republic of Iran reported that a Mossad-affiliated group kidnapped him in Iran and published his confessions”.
The source also spoke on the court proceedings and the trial of the civilians and said: “The trial of these ten civilians was held in two separate sessions at Branch Three of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Orumiyeh, presided over by Judge Najafzadeh. The court sentenced them to death while some of them were denied the right to have lawyers. The sentence was communicated to the prisoners at Orumiyeh Central Prison in the past few weeks.”
Last week, Aram Omari, Rahman Parhazou, Amir Moshtagh Gangachin, Fakhroddin Doudkanlou Milan, and Ashkan Osmannezhad went on a hunger strike, protesting against their “unjust” death and prison sentences.
These prisoners, who were transferred to solitary confinement after announcing the hunger strike, temporarily ended their strike yesterday after meeting their families in person and were returned to the ward for political prisoners.
