Kurdish political prisoner Keyvan Rashozadeh has been transferred from Orumiyeh Central Prison to the detention facility of the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at Al-Mahdi base in the city, where he has been subjected to interrogation and threats.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that Rashozadeh was transferred to the IRGC detention facility last week while he was on a hunger strike in the “secure” ward of Orumiyeh Central Prison.
Security interrogators threatened Rashozadeh that a new judicial case would be filed against him if he continued his hunger strike and protests.
The political prisoner was transferred to solitary confinement on 17 April after prison guards raided the section housing political and religious prisoners and physically assaulted them.
Later that day, he was transferred back to the main prison yard, where he was tortured with baton blows by prison guards, as ordered by officials.
In response to his torture and beating, and the denial of parole, Rashozadeh began a 15-day hunger strike.
On the eleventh day of his hunger strike, Nazdar Roudsaz, Rashozadeh’s mother, expressed grave concern for her son’s health, revealing that he had been tortured by prison guards after being handcuffed and shackled.
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.
