Hossein Osmani, a Kurdish political prisoner serving the eleventh year of his 30-year sentence in Orumiyeh Central Prison, was recently transferred to the prison’s medical facility due to illness. After being hospitalised for three days, he was returned to the political prisoners’ ward on 26 January without being transferred to a hospital outside the prison.

Osmani, 63, suffers from multiple health problems and since his arrest in February 2014 has only been granted temporary leave once, in October 2021, with the approval of the Chief Justice of West Azerbaijan Province.

Since then, however, the Ministry of Intelligence has consistently opposed his medical treatment outside prison and denied him medical leave.

Osmani was arrested on 23 February 2014 after being summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence office in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan Province, and then transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province, where he was subjected to severe pressure and torture for 13 months in order to extract forced confessions regarding his alleged involvement in the 2010 Mahabad bombing.

In 2014, he spent four months in Khomeini Hospital in Orumiyeh, receiving medical treatment for injuries sustained during torture. However, his health has never fully recovered.

During his detention, he was denied family visits and was only allowed two short phone calls.

On 7 April 2015, Osmani and two other Kurdish political prisoners, Diako Rasoulzadeh and Saber Sheikh Abdollah, were sentenced to public execution by Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Mahabad, presided over by Judge Javadikia, on charges of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) through membership of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan and “involvement in the 2010 Mahabad bombing”.

The trial was conducted without the defendant’s right to have access to legal representation.

On appeal, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and the case was sent back to the same court for a retrial. In 2018, Judge Javad Gholami sentenced Osmani to 30 years’ imprisonment and exile in Orumiyeh Central Prison, a sentence later upheld by the Supreme Court.

The charges against Osmani were based on forced confessions obtained under torture. In court, he denied the confessions recorded in his case file and informed the judge of the torture he had endured. However, his defence was ignored.

On 23 September 2019, after 11 months, Osmani was transferred from Mahabad Prison to Orumiyeh Central Prison.

Meanwhile, Diako Rasoulzadeh and Saber Sheikh Abdollah were executed on 13 July 2020.

The Iranian authorities have made contradictory statements about the perpetrators of the 2010 bombing. While the Ministry of Intelligence announced on 18 May 2014 that three people had been arrested as the “perpetrators of the bombing”, three years earlier, on 26 September 2010, the commander of the IRGC Ground Forces stated that the “main operatives” behind the bombing had been killed.

A source close to the case revealed: “During their detention, Ministry of Intelligence interrogators first tortured the three Kurdish detainees before offering them a deal. They were told that if they accepted responsibility for the bombing, they would be released. If they refused, they would face trumped-up charges and a death sentence.

In September 2014, Iran’s Press TV broadcast a video featuring the coerced confessions of these political prisoners, in an attempt to present them as official evidence.