Iranian authorities have secretly executed Kurdish political prisoner Hamid Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou, his family was told on the evening of 21 April after being summoned to the Orumiyeh court in West Azerbaijan Province. Officials did not disclose when the execution took place.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that on the evening of 21 April, the Deputy Prosecutor of Orumiyeh, Behzad Sarkhanlou, informed the family that Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou had been transferred from Orumiyeh Central Prison to Tehran, where his death sentence was carried out.
Officials also told the family that they were banned from holding a memorial service.
Although the authorities had previously said that the execution had been halted and there were reports that he had been transferred from Orumiyeh, no evidence has emerged to confirm his transfer to Tehran.
In a brief telephone conversation with his family on 18 April, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou confirmed the temporary suspension of the execution but did not reveal his whereabouts. He urged his family to continue their efforts to have the sentence overturned.
Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was placed in solitary confinement at Orumiyeh Central Prison on 16 April in preparation for execution, and his lawyer had received an official notice stating that the execution was scheduled for 18 April.
Following the announcement, family members staged a protest outside Orumiyeh Central Prison calling for the execution to be stopped.
Although the prison director stated on 18 April that the execution had been temporarily suspended by order of the Orumiyeh prosecutor, the sit-in continued amid growing concern about the risk of a sudden execution.
Arrest and Legal Proceedings
Hosseinnezhad 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.
Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou, born in 1985 and a father of three from the village of Segrik in Chaldoran, West Azerbaijan Province, had worked as a fuel porter and border trader in recent years.
