‘Mohamad Sedigh Kaboudwand, a Kurdish human rights activist and journalist jailed in the ward 350 of the notorious Evin prison of Tehran launched a hunger strike on 8 May 2016 to protest against the new fabricated charges against him and the rejection of his request to benefit from an adjustment of his penalty,” a well-informed source told Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN)
“In the visiting room of Evin prison Mr Kabudwand told his family on 9 May that his hunger strike will be indefinite until his requests are being listened to by the prison authorities. His health condition was already poor before, that’s why this hunger strike is all the more disturbing,” the source said.
“Kaboudwand was lately transferred twice to Tajrish hospital in Tehran for a prostatic hyperplasia. The medical staff feared a prostate cancer. A third transfer to hospital was scheduled for 17 May. Kaboudvand launched his hunger strike after a full year of harassment by the Iranian authorities,” the source said.
“Over the past few months, this prisoner was summoned three times and each time new fabricated charges were added to his case,” the source said.
The source explained that the first time, the Iranian authorities reproached him with a letter he had written form his cell to support the epic resistance of Kurds in Kobane against Islamic State (IS, ISISI/ISIL), and a second letter he had written to Selahettin Demirtas, the co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
The source said that “the second time, the Iranian authorities simply considered his letters as ‘propaganda against the state’. The third time the Iranian authorities were angered by a project he had proposed to write as an academic thesis about political prisoners. Kaboudvand was interrogated about this project and he is innocent of all the alleged charges brought against him.”
He did not have the opportunity to begin this project although the topic was not the issue of political prisoners in Iran but Turkey’s interior affairs.
The source said that “Evin Court explicitly announced that he must be exiled to a remote prison in southern Iran far from his family, although he was told before that he has the right to have his sentence adjusted. But after two days, the authorities simply announced that this right does not apply to his case,”
The source said: ‘His family must wait every Monday of the week to visit in order to be informed about his health because in ward 350 of Evin prison inmates are deprived of phone calls. Kabudwand’s has already weakened because of a previous hunger strike. He suffered from a kidney and digestive tract infection. This new hunger strike of his could be very dangerous for him and put his life in danger.”
Kabudwand was head of Kurdistan Human Rights Association and editor of the weekly magazine “Payam e mardom” (People’s voice).
He was arrested on 1 July 2007 by Iranian security forces.
He spent six months in solitary confinement in ward 209 of Evin prison. During this period, he left his cell only when he was taken for interrogations.
After one year, the Tehran Special Court charged him with “act against national security” because of his activities as head of a Kurdish rights organisation and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The court also sentenced him to one more year behind bars on the charge of “propaganda against the state”, which makes his sentence to a total of 11 years in prison.
The ward 56 of Tehran province Appeal Court had confirmed his sentence.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Court of Sanandaj later sentenced him to one more year in prison with the charge of “disturbing public order”.
He was also banned to practice journalism for 5 years and his magazine was given a publication ban.
The Appeal Court later reduced the latter one-year sentence to six months.
*The ‘adjustment of penalty’ gives right to serve only one of the sentences (the longest) and to avoid the accumulation of all the sentences.
