A Kurdish civil rights activist from Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, has begun serving a six-month prison sentence, while in a separate incident, a Kurdish man from Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province, has remained in incommunicado detention for four days following his arrest by intelligence agents.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that civil rights activist and former political prisoner Herish Zandi Navgaran reported to Sanandaj Central Prison on 15 November to begin a six-month sentence for “propaganda against the state”. A group of political and civil rights activists accompanied him as he entered custody.
Zandi Navgaran was arrested by Ministry of Intelligence forces at his workplace in Sanandaj on 20 January and interrogated for several days at the ministry’s detention centre, and then transferred to the city’s central prison.
After spending a month in custody, he was released on bail on 18 February, and the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj later convicted him on charges of “propaganda against the state”.
He had previously been arrested in 2007 and sentenced to one year in prison on charges of “acting against national security” through membership in the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan.
In a separate case in Orumiyeh, Farzad (Najmaddin) Galleban, a resident of the village of Karimabad and currently living in the village of Valendeh-ye Sofla, was arrested without a warrant on 13 November.
Ministry of Intelligence agents subsequently raided his family home and confiscated several of his family members’ personal belongings.
Since his arrest, Galleban has been denied the right to contact his family or access legal counsel.
Following repeated enquiries from his family, the security agencies and the Orumiyeh court informed them that he had been transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in the city for interrogation.
