Kurdish political prisoner Abdolaziz Gol-Mohammadi, who is serving a sentence of ten years and one day in Orumiyeh Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province, began a dry hunger strike on 14 October in protest at the rejection of his request for leave by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organisation.
Gol-Mohammadi delivered a letter to the prison authorities on 14 October declaring his hunger strike.
In recent months, prison authorities and the supervising judge had approved his temporary leave, but the Orumiyeh Prosecutor’s Office made the final decision conditional on the approval of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organisation.
On 8 October 2019, security forces arrested Gol-Mohammadi and four other civilians, Omid Saeidi, Kamran Ghassemi, Nayeb (Masoud) Hajizadeh, and Keyvan Rashozadeh, and took them to the detention facility of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Orumiyeh.
After two months of interrogation, the five civilians were transferred to the city’s central prison.
After a year of legal limbo, in December 2020, Branch Two of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh sentenced each of them to 10 years and one day in prison.
The court accused them of ‘acting against national security’ through their membership of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan.
After Gol-Mohammadi appealed the verdict, the case was referred to the Supreme Court and, after some time, the verdict was upheld by Branch 41 of the Supreme Court.
On 26 January 2021, Gol-Mohammadi was released on bail of 10 billion rials – nearly 20,000 USD – but was re-arrested seven months later, in August 2021, to serve the sentence.
