A group of Kurdish religious prisoners from Orumiyeh prison’s refused to receive prison food on 24 May in protest over being imprisoned with non-political and criminal inmates in Orumiyeh Central Prison.
These prisoners currently held in ward number 3-4 and 2 (Ward for mental prisoner) of Orumiyeh prison and are on the second day of hunger strike. Today, After one hour protest in front of the gate of officers in prison, they have been transferred to solitary confinements yard, by the prison authorities, a Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) source said.
The names of political prisoners currently kept imprisoned in various wards among non-political prisoners in Orumiyeh prison, is as follows:
Ibrahim Gholami, Yousef GhasemPour, Yaghoub Noureh, Abdolghour Asvar, Abdollah Cham, Kazem (Unknown family name), Kamal Ali Aghdam, Hazhae Faroughi, Behzad (Unknown family name) and Mansour (Unknown family name). The prisoners are from Boukan, Mahabad, Piranshahr and Orumiyeh that have been arrested by security forces, on charges of membership in Radical religious group.
The source added after several hours of keeping the prisoners in the yard of solitary confinement, Abdollah Cham, Ibrahim Gholami and Yousef GhasemPour were transferred to an unknown location outside the prison by prison officers and the other prisoners despite the hunger strike were transferred back to wards 1, 2 and 3-4.
According to articles 8 of Iran’s state prisons organisation’s regulations, “All convicts, upon being admitted to walled prisons or rehabilitation centres, will be separated based on the type and duration of their sentence, prior record, character, morals and behaviour in accordance with decisions made by the Prisoners Classification Council.”
Over the past two years, officials in Orumiyeh Central Prison, have intensified their pressure on political prisoners because of a plan by various security and intelligence apparatus to shut down sections of political ward.
According to information obtained from local source by KHRN, 10 political prisoners, one security prisoner and 8 non-political prisoners are currently imprisoned in the ward 12 and at least 50 political and religious prisoners are imprisoned with dangerous criminal inmates at the prison.