Ramadan Ahmed Kamal, a Syrian Kurdish political prisoner from Kobane (located in Kurdistan of Syria also known as Rojava) who has spent more than ten years in jail in Iran, has been handed over to the Syrian government.

Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has been informed that, on May 18 when Ramadan Ahmed Kamal was supposed to released from prison, he was transferred to one of the Security centres of Islamic Republic of Iran Guards Corps (IRGC) near Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran before being handed over to the Syrian government in Damascus a few days later on Wednesday, May 23.

Ramazan Ahmad Kamal was arrested in 2008 at one of the villages near Maku by IRGC while he had been injured severely. Despite his serious need of medical care, he was taken to the Security Detention Centre of IRGC and was interrogated on the charge of membership in PKK (Kurdish Worker’s Party). A few months later, this Kurdish prisoner was sentenced to death by Khoy Islamic Revolutionary Court on charge of membership in the PKK but the supreme court reduced the sentence to 10 years in prison. Since his arrest in 2008, this political prisoner has gone on hunger strike six times so far in protest to lack of medical care. In the last few months, he has been transferred to hospital several times but the hospital authorities have denied him of a bed and proper medical care. In June 2015, this Kurdish prisoner from Kobane was beaten during his transfer to the hospital and passed out.

In order to attract the attention of the public and human rights institutions to his difficult situation, he wrote an open letter to Dr Ahmad Shahid (UN Special Rapporteur) in January 2015. In his letter, this political prisoner had introduced himself while explaining his need for urgent medical care and emphasising that he had gone into coma once after being beaten with a baton by prison authorities.

In this letter, he also mentions that he had endured severe bleeding from his nose and ears in addition to sustaining bruises as a result of being assaulted. Ramazan Ahmad Kamal has lodged a complaint to Tehran’s Prosecutor’s Office of the Prosecutor with regards to the aforementioned incident.

During the past 8 years in prison, this prisoner’s arm has been operated twice in the prison and now his arm is paralysed. Qazvin Prosecutor ordered the prison authorities to allow him follow-up medical care after he went on several hunger strikes. But he was beaten up by the Rajai Shahr prison authorities.

He has spent his imprisonment time in various prisons in Iran, including the prison of Maku, Qazvin, Evin and Rajajah Shahr.

It is worth noting that in December 2017, another political prisoner, Mustafa Ali Ahmad, was handed over to the Syrian government after being held at Orumiyeh Central Prison for 11 years and 6 months.