The Mahabad Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s office has extended the temporary detention of two Kurdish activists Farzad Samani and Sakar Eini for the fourth time to press them to make forced confessions, sources told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
The two activists from Mahabad were arrested in Tehran on 9 January 2021, in the first day of the mass arrests of Kurdish activists and civilians.
In an interview with the KHRN, a source in Mahabad said that on 10 April, Branch 3 of the Mahabad Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office extended the detentions of the two activists, who are still being held in the detention centre of the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Orumiyeh.
According to the source, the two Kurdish activists have been under pressure to make forced confessions and cooperate with security interrogators in the last three months, and that the extension of their detention was in line with the pressure they were subjected to.
More than 100 Kurdish activists were arrested in various cities with the start of the widespread arrests of Kurdish civilians and activists on 9 January 2021. Many of the detainees have been released on bail in the past months while others are still being held in the detention centres of the Intelligence Office and the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Orumiyeh, Sanandaj, and Marivan.
