Nasser Atbati, the Director General of the Justice Department of Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, has threatened the prisoner Hadi Rostami, who was sentenced to amputation of four fingers of his right hand, saying that his sentence would be executed if he did not obtain the consent of the plaintiffs.
On 6 September, a judicial delegation led by Atbati together with the Public Prosecutor of Orumiyeh visited the city prison.
During his meeting with the delegation, Rostami asked for the status of his case to be determined.
In response, Majidi told him that if he did not obtain the consent of the plaintiffs in his case, he would be sent to Tehran for the execution of his sentence.
Majidi added that he would not be allowed to “cause disorder in Orumiyeh Central Prison the way you did in the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary”.
On 15 May, Rostami and two of his co-defendants named Mehdi Sharafian and Mehdi Shahivand were transferred from Orumiyeh Central Prison to the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary for unknown reasons.
The prisoner was transferred to Rajai Shahr Prison on 12 June after being beaten by the officers of the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary. He was then returned to Orumiyeh Central Prison in early July.
After the transfer of these three prisoners to Tehran prison and the publication of news about the amputation of a prisoner’s finger in the prison in early June, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABC) published a joint statement on the imminent risk of finger amputation that eight prisoners faced.
Rostami was detained on 25 August 2017 in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan province, along with two other civilians named Mehdi Shahivand and Mehdi Sharafian.
Rostami had previously written a letter addressed to the Amnesty Commission of Iran and the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran:
“I, Hadi Rostami, have been sentenced to the amputation of four fingers of my right hand and payment of several billion [Iranian Tomans] worth of restitution of property under case number 100403 at Branch 1 of the Criminal Court of West Azerbaijan province. I have been in prison for five years now. I have been severely tortured in the offices of the intelligence ministry in several cities, including Orumiyeh, Ardabil, and Bandar-e Anzali.”
The prisoner further stated in his letter that he was not aware of 20 of the 28 thefts mentioned in his case and that the court had ordered the brutal amputation of four fingers of his right hand, regardless of his defence in the court.
Branch 13 of the Supreme Court of Iran upheld the sentence and referred it to the Enforcement of Judgments Office of Branch 8 of the Public and Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh for execution.
Rostami, 35, is the father of a child and comes from Ilam, in western Iran.
