Fatemeh Maghsoudi, the mother of Edris Feqhi, a member of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) who was forcibly disappeared 21 months ago by the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was released on 11 May after signing a written pledge not to stage sit-ins outside security institutions in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan province.
Maghsoudi, 67, was arrested on 9 May for staging a three-day sit-in outside the IRGC intelligence office in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan province, demanding accountability for the fate of her son.
She was handed over to the State Welfare Organisation in Orumiyeh on the orders of Behzad Sarkhanlou, an interrogator at Branch 6 of the city’s Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office, and following complaints from the IRGC’s Intelligence Organisation.
On 11 May, the mother of the PJAK member was taken to court and told by Sarkhanlou in a contradictory statement that her son had managed to escape after clashes with the Revolutionary Guards and was later killed while fighting alongside Kurdish forces against Islamic State (IS) in Syria.
This is the second time in two years that Maghsoudi has been detained and released, having signed a written undertaking not to pursue what happened to her child.
Conflicting information on Feqhi’s situation from IRGC Intelligence
On 21 February 2022, some members of Feqhi’s family gathered outside the office of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organisation in Orumiyeh to enquire about his condition.
The security and police officers at the scene ignored their demands and detained the prisoner’s mother, who was about to set herself on fire as a sign of protest, and several other family members for hours.
The police took them to one of the police stations near the IRGC Intelligence detention centre and interrogated them for several hours.
A plainclothes officer from the IRGC Intelligence Organisation met the detainees at the police station and informed them that Feqhi was alive and being held in the IRGC Intelligence Organisation’s detention centre.
The officer told the family that they had no right to visit or have contact with Feqhi until his interrogation was over.
They were eventually released after being forced to pledge not to gather again outside the office of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC.
In March, Feqhi’s mother released a video and said: “It has been two years since I received any information about my son’s fate. When I go to Tehran, Orumiyeh or any other city, they tell me that he was killed and did not survive, and they say that they are not keeping him, and then they say that they are. Orally, they say they are holding him in detention, but then they say they are not. A few days ago, we went to the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Orumiyeh and they told us that he was there. They told us to get a letter from 113 [the Ministry of Intelligence] to visit him and that his case was being investigated. When we went to 113, one of the officers there mocked and disrespected us and said “Where is your son?” I am asking human rights organisations and journalists to find my child so that I can visit him for five minutes. I swear to God that I am sick. For God’s sake, I ask human rights organisations and respectable journalists to find my child.”
Concern has grown over the fate of Feqhi, who was detained and forcibly disappeared almost 21 months ago.
The IRGC’s Intelligence Organisation reportedly handed Feqhi over to the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh last summer after interrogating him.
On the orders of security interrogators, he is still being denied the right to contact his family or receive family visits.
In early September 2022, the Ministry of Intelligence in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, summoned Maghsoudi and interrogated her for several hours over the release of a video on the first anniversary of her son’s enforced disappearance.
The interrogators told her that she had no right to wear a white scarf, known as the symbol of Kurdistan’s peace mothers, and travel to Orumiyeh to inquire about the fate of her child.
On 9 September 2022, Amnesty International said prosecutors and security and intelligence agents in West Azerbaijan province had “forcibly disappeared” the 36-year-old Kurdish political dissident Edris Feqhi since late July 2021.
Over the past two years, IRGC intelligence officers and the Orumiyeh court have presented contradictory scenarios every time in response to the requests of the Feqhi family to learn about his fate.
They initially announced that Feqhi had been shot dead by IRGC forces and that they would “send his body photo and death certificate” to his family, but they have yet to provide the family with any proof.
The Orumiyeh court also told the family that it could not respond to them because of the sensitivity of the case and pressure from the security services.
Former detainees claimed to have seen Feqhi
On 28 September 2021, the KHRN published a report stating that evidence showed that the PJAK member who had reportedly been killed during a clash between PJAK and IRGC forces near Bukan on 24 July 2021 was in fact still alive.
The report said that Feqhi was being held in the detention facility of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organisation.
According to the KHRN, Feqhi was shot in the leg by IRGC forces during the clash, but managed to hide. Later, however, the IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyyed al-Shohada base sent a large number of forces to the area and arrested him wounded.
IRGC forces first transferred him to the security institution’s Arefian Hospital in Orumiyeh. They then took him to its detention centre.
He is currently being held in the public cell of the IRGC’s Haft-e Tir intelligence centre at the al-Mahdi base in Orumiyeh.
He has not completed his treatment and is in poor physical condition due to the serious injuries he has suffered.
At least two people who have been in the same detention centre over the past year have seen him in the facility’s infirmary.
PJAK confirmed Feqhi‘s arrest by IRGC forces
On 24 July 2021, forces from the IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyyed al-Shohada base ambushed a group of PJAK members in the mountainous heights of Alamabad village in Bukan, and a fierce clash ensued between the two groups for several minutes.
On 27 July 2021, the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that two members of a Kurdish party had been killed and one wounded member had been arrested, citing the Hamzeh Seyyed al-Shohada base.
On 6 August 2021, the PJAK also confirmed that two of its members, Edris Feqhi, from Sanandaj, and Mohsen Ghaderi, from Bukan, had been killed in an armed clash with the IRGC near Bukan.
But after a while, PJAK issued another statement announcing that Mohsen Ghaderi was alive and that Feqhi had been arrested after being wounded by the Revolutionary Guards.
