Kurdish political prisoner Keyvan Rashozadeh continues to be denied medical treatment for injuries sustained as a result of torture by prison authorities, as he enters the seventh day of his hunger strike in solitary confinement at Orumiyeh Central Prison.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that despite his injuries, Rashozadeh has been denied access to medical services on the orders of Peyman Khanzadeh, the prison director.
Family members of the political prisoner have attempted to visit him and request phone calls in recent days, facing opposition from prison officials.
Rashozadeh was transferred to solitary confinement on 17 April after security forces raided the section housing political and religious prisoners and physically assaulted them.
He was then transferred back to the main prison yard, where he was tortured with baton blows by prison guards, as ordered by officials.
Other political prisoners, including Shaker Behrouz and Ardavan Tahourian, who ended their hunger strike on 22 April and returned to the ward, have spoken of Rashozadeh’s severe torture and poor conditions in solitary confinement.
Background
On 8 October 2019, security forces arrested Rashozadeh along with four other civilians, Omid Saeidi, Kamran Ghassemi, Nayeb (Massoud) Hajipour and Abdolaziz Gol-Mohammadi.
After a month of interrogation in the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Orumiyeh, these civilians were transferred to the juvenile section of Orumiyeh Central Prison.
In December 2020, after a year of uncertainty in prison, Branch Two of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh sentenced them each to 10 years and one day in prison.
It charged the civilians with “acting against national security” through their membership of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan.
Their sentences were later commuted to seven years and six months.
In December 2020, Rashozadeh, Ghassemi and Saeidi went on a week-long hunger strike to protest against the uncertainty of their situation, the pressure from the Ministry of Intelligence and the failure of the prison authorities to respect the principle of separation of crimes in the juvenile section of Orumiyeh Central Prison.
In June 2022, he also went on hunger strike, sewing his lips shut for several days in protest at the refusal of the prison authorities and the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh to grant his request for leave.
