Kurdish political prisoner Reza Mollazadeh has been released from Borazjan Prison, in Iran’s southwestern province of Bushehr, on 13 February.

Mollazadeh served 10 years and six months of his 16-year prison sentence, during which he was deprived of his right to temporary leave and parole.

His release came following the approval of the country’s Amnesty Commission.

In the summer of 2011, the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) arrested Mollazadeh near Baneh, Kurdistan province.

After being arrested, he was first taken to a detention centre in Kermanshah and then to another detention centre in Tehran.

The political prisoner was denied the right to communicate with or receive visits by his family for a year.

In 2012, Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran – presided over by Judge Salavati – sentenced Mollazadeh to the death penalty on charges of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) through “membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK)”.

After the prisoner appealed against the ruling, the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to 15 years in prison and internal exile to Borazjan Prison.

Mollazadeh was also sentenced to one year in prison in another case on charges of “illegal exit from the country”.

Later, the political prisoner was internally exiled from Evin Prison in Tehran to Borazjan Prison after the sentence was finalized.

Mollahzadeh comes from the Ashnak village of Salmas, in the northwestern province of West Azerbaijan.