Kurdish political prisoner Sakineh Parvaneh was released under amnesty from Mashhad Central Prison on 11 February, while serving the fourth year of her seven-year prison sentence.
In the past few days, some political prisoners were released without prior notice after a decree to grant amnesty and reduction of sentences was issued by Iranian authorities.
“On Saturday, 11 February, prison officials and agents of the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) summoned the political prisoner to the prison’s Enforcement of Judgments Office and informed her that she was free, but that she did not have the right to reside at any of Iran’s border cities after her release”, said a source in an interview with the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
The source added that Parvaneh had been denied the right to temporary leave and parole since her arrest due to opposition from the IRGC’s intelligence agency.
Parvaneh had previously published a letter on 25 June 2020, describing her detention process and the harassment she had gone through during her imprisonment.
According to this letter, the security agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrested her in the early autumn of 2019 under the pretext of meeting her family in the city of Sulaimaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
After her arrest, said the letter, she was first taken to the Iran-Iraq border and held in the detention centres of Marivan and Sanandaj for 10 days and then taken to the Evin Prison of Tehran.
Parvaneh added that in Evin Prison, she was interrogated and physically tortured in wards A and 209 and the ward for women prisoners.
Parvaneh’s lawyer Payam Derafshan said on 25 May 2020 that his client had been sentenced to five years in prison and three years ban from membership in political groups on charges of “membership in groups or factions opposing the state with the aim of disrupting national security”.
In April 2020, Parvaneh was transferred from Evin Prison to Qarchak Prison in Varamin for writing and chanting slogans. After spending four days in solitary confinement in this prison, she was transferred to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Rey.
The political prisoner was returned to Evin Prison on 4 July 2020 with bruises and beating marks on her body.
Later, a court sentenced Parvaneh to two years in prison in August 2020 on charges of “disrupting the prison order”.
In November 2020, the political prisoner was transferred from Evin Prison to Quchan and Mashhad prisons.
In addition, in the past two years, she was taken several times to the detention centre of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Mashhad and was subjected to physical and mental torture to make confessions on TV.
Parvaneh also went on hunger strikes several times to protest against the pressure of security agencies.
