Kurdish political prisoner Nayeb Hajizadeh is in critical condition in Orumiyeh Central Prison, Iran’s northwestern province of West Azerbaijan, as he has been deprived of proper medical care.
Hajizadeh had been sent to an out-of-prison hospital for surgery in the past few months and had been returned to prison after undergoing surgery without completing his treatment.
He underwent platinum surgery and surgery for internal abdominal rupture in June 2021 and February 2022.
In recent months, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Orumiyeh issued a bail of 1.2 billion Tomans – nearly 48,000 USD – to send the political prisoner on temporary leave due to his illness. But the judge supervising the prison and the judge in charge of his case, while opposing this amount of bail, have issued a bail of 4 billion Tomans – nearly 160,000 USD.
Background
Security forces had arrested Nayeb Hajizadeh on 8 October 2019, along with four other civilians Kamran Ghasemi, Keyvan Rashozadeh, Omid Saeidi, and Abdolaziz Mohammadpour. They were taken to the detention centre of the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh.
After a month of interrogation in the detention centre of the intelligence ministry, these civilians were transferred to Orumiyeh Central Prison.
Their trial was held in December 2020 in Branch 2 of the Orumiyeh Revolutionary Court. Each was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison on charges of “acting against national security” through “membership in the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan”.
In August, Hajizadeh and two other Kurdish political prisoners, Keyhan Mokarram and Nayeb Askari, were sentenced to 50 lashes and three months in prison after the head of Orumiyeh Central Prison filed a complaint, accusing the prisoners of “disrupting the prison order”.
The lawsuit was filed after a general crimes prisoner beat a Kurdish political prisoner.