Prisoner Hadi Rostami, who is sentenced to amputation of four fingers of his right hand, has been transferred from Orumiyeh Central Prison to Bukan Prison, sources told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
Rostami was transferred from the security ward of Orumiyeh Central Prison to the quarantine ward of Bukan Prison by law enforcement forces on Thursday, 18 February, and was beaten by officers of the Prison Security Unit upon arrival.
After being held in the quarantine ward of the prison for several days, he was transferred to the inner ward.
On 14 February, Rostami’s 60-lash sentence was executed in Branch 8 of the Execution of Judgements Office of the Court of Orumiyeh. The inhumane sentence was carried out at a time that he was suffering from physical injuries caused by his two suicide attempts eating glass, in the previous two months.
Following the execution of this sentence, Amnesty International issued a statement stating that by flogging Rostami 60 times, Iranian authorities reminded the world, in a heinous manner, of the brutality of Iran’s severely flawed judicial system. The organization called on the Iranian authorities to immediately overturn Rostami’s prison sentence and the sentence to amputate his fingers, and to provide him with access to the urgent medical care he needs.
In the past two months, Rostami twice committed suicide by eating glass to protest his detention in the security ward of Orumiyeh Central Prison and the risk of the execution of his sentence.
Despite his serious physical and health condition and urgent need to be sent to a hospital outside the prison after eating glass, Rostami was kept in prison due to the opposition of the inspector and the head of the prison.
The prisoner has suffered internal bleeding several times in the past month due to the shards of glass in his digestive system.
Rostami was internally exiled to Tabriz Prison from Orumiyeh Central Prison on 19 December 2020, without prior notice. However, Tabriz prison officials refused to accept him for a long period and he was returned to Orumiyeh Central Prison after one day.
On 8 December 2020, Rostami wrote a letter to Ali Akbar Garousi, Chief Justice of West Azerbaijan province, saying he had been tortured during his detention by intelligence agents and that he and his two co-defendants had been unjustly sentenced based on their confessions under torture. He demanded re-examination of the case and revocation of the amputation order in his letter.
Amnesty International had released a detailed analytical report earlier in December stating that Iranian authorities should immediately stop the imminent plan to cut off the fingers of Hadi Rostami and five other detainees who were convicted to theft after unfair trials based on forced confessions obtained under torture.
According to the statistics compiled by the KHRN, there are currently six prisoners convicted of “theft” and sentenced to “amputation of four fingers of a hand”. These prisoners are the 33-year-old Hadi Rostami, 37-year-old Mehdi Sharafian, 42-year-old Mehdi Shahivand, 35-year-old Shahab Teymouri, 39-year-old Mehrdad Teymouri, and 40-year-old Kasra Karami.
