The whereabouts of Hamid Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou, a Kurdish political prisoner scheduled for execution this morning, remain unknown after he was transferred from Orumiyeh Central Prison to an undisclosed location.
Branch Nine of the Enforcement of Judgements Office of the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province, had previously announced that the execution would take place in the early hours of Friday 18 April.
However, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that in a brief phone call at 14:00 local time, following the ongoing sit-in by Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou’s family and relatives outside the prison, he informed his family of his wellbeing and asked them to continue to follow up on his case.
The prison director, Peyman Khanzadeh, also informed the prisoner’s family, telling his wife and brother that the execution had been suspended on the orders of the city prosecutor, Majidi, and that he had been transferred by security forces to an undisclosed location the previous day – a development that has deepened fears about his fate.
In the past two days, the prisoner has submitted both a request for a retrial to the Supreme Court and an appeal for clemency to the Amnesty and Clemency Commission. No official response has yet been received to either petition.
On 17 April, the family were allowed a ten-minute visit with Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou in the presence of security forces, but he was brought into the meeting room handcuffed and shackled. A family member said he reiterated his innocence, saying: “My only concern is the fate of my children; I am no longer afraid of death”.
The continued sit-in by the family and relatives in the afternoon of the same day was met with a violent response from special forces, who attempted to disperse the protesters with threats and force.
Arrest and Legal Proceedings
Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou, born in 1985 and a father of three from the village of Segrik in Chaldoran, West Azerbaijan Province, was arrested along with several Afghan nationals by border guards at the Chaldoran border on 13 April 2023 and taken to the Chaldoran Border Guards Detention Centre, where he was interrogated for several hours before his detention order was changed to bail.
However, the bail was not accepted as an arrest warrant was issued at the request of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
He was then transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention facility in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province.
A source had previously told the KHRN that Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou had been held in the ministry’s detention facility for 11 months and 10 days, during which time he was subjected to severe physical and psychological torture in order to force him to confess to his “involvement” in an armed clash between PKK forces and Iranian border guards, a confrontation which resulted in the deaths of eight border guards.
His family stated that throughout his detention, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was only allowed two brief phone calls with his family and was denied visits and access to legal representation.
For approximately eight months, he was subjected to intense pressure and torture by intelligence interrogators and the investigating officer, identified as Estiri. Eventually, he was forced to sign pre-written statements prepared by interrogators, despite being illiterate and unable to read the contents.
During interrogations and court hearings, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou, who was denied the right to appoint his own lawyer due to objections from the Ministry of Intelligence, denied all charges and insisted that his confessions had been extracted under torture.
He also provided documentary evidence that he was travelling to Turkey with his family on the day of the armed clash between PKK fighters and Iranian border guards. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh, presided over by Judge Najafzadeh, rejected the evidence and sentenced him to death on charges of “armed insurrection” (baghi) through alleged membership of the PKK, in a hearing that lasted only a few minutes.
It was reported that in a fabricated case against the political prisoner, the Ministry of Intelligence claimed – without providing any verifiable evidence – that he had developed animosity towards the border forces because of the killing of his brother-in-law, Mostafa Nouri, by Iranian border guards in 2015 while he was engaged in cross-border trade.
As a result, he was accused of collaborating with PKK forces during the clashes between them and the border guards.
Recently, Branch Nine of the Supreme Court upheld Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou’s death sentence and officially notified him on 9 April.
