Omid Saeidi, a Kurdish political prisoner serving a ten-year sentence in Khoy Prison, has gone on a hunger strike in protest at the Ministry of Intelligence’s opposition to granting him temporary leave.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that today the political prisoner delivered a letter announcing his hunger strike to prison authorities.
In the letter, Saeidi wrote that he was transferred to Khoy prison from Orumiyeh Central Prison four months ago, and that despite the Prison Classification Council’s approval of his temporary leave and the provision of 15 billion rials – nearly 30,000 USD – in bail, the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh has opposed his release.
Saeidi was arrested on 8 October 2019 along with four other civilians, Nayeb Hajizadeh, Kamran Ghasemi, Keyvan Rashozadeh, and Abdolaziz Mohammadpour, by security forces and taken to the Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in Orumiyeh.
After a month of interrogation, they were transferred to Orumiyeh Central Prison.
In December 2020, Branch Two of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh sentenced each to ten years and one day in prison on charges of “acting against national security” through “membership in the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan.”
Saeidi’s sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court after his appeal, while the sentences of the other three were reduced to seven years and six months in prison.
