The Civil Registry Office in Chaldoran, West Azerbaijan Province, has issued the death certificate of Kurdish political prisoner Hamid Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou, several weeks after his secret execution, and handed it over to his family.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that the certificate was officially issued on 5 May, following a visit by the prisoner’s family to the local civil registry office.
The document states that Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was executed on 19 April 2025 in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province. This directly contradicts earlier claims made verbally by judicial officials, who told the family on 21 April that he had been transferred to Tehran and executed in one of the capital’s prisons.
KHRN had previously reported that the execution had taken place secretly in Orumiyeh, with the body buried in an unknown location by the Ministry of Intelligence.
Last week, several of Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou’s family members were summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence office in Orumiyeh, where security officers informed them that his body had been buried in a location that would not be disclosed and warned them against further inquiries about the return of the body or its burial site.
On 16 April 2025, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was transferred to solitary confinement in Orumiyeh Central Prison in preparation for his execution, and his lawyer received an official notice stating that the execution was scheduled for 18 April.
However, after a sit-in protest by the family and growing international concern, the prisoner made a brief phone call to his family on 18 April, confirming that he was alive and urging them to continue advocating for him.
Despite the call, the family remained doubtful about its authenticity, suspecting it may have been orchestrated by security forces.
According to the death certificate, the execution was carried out at dawn on 19 April, in the presence of security and judicial officials in Orumiyeh.
On the same day, Peyman Khanzadeh, the head of Orumiyeh Central Prison, contacted the family claiming the execution had been suspended by order of the prosecutor and that the case was under further review.
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.
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.
