Kurdish political prisoner Omid Saeidi has entered his ninth day of a hunger strike in Khoy Prison, in north-west Iran, and his physical condition is reported to be poor.
Saeidi began his hunger strike on 4 July in protest at the opposition of the Ministry of Intelligence in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan province, to his furlough request, and sewed his lips together as a symbol of his protest.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that Saeidi continues to insist on his hunger strike due to the failure of prison officials to respond to his request for leave, and has refused to receive serum after being transferred to the prison clinic.
Furthermore, after announcing his hunger strike, Saeidi was deprived of his right to family visits by order of the prison authorities.
Last week, Khoy prosecutor Yaghoub Rashtbar and Khoy prison director Safar Tavarizadeh visited the prisoner and threatened to send him to Jolfa or Kermanshah prisons if the strike continued.
In a letter to prison authorities on 4 July, Saeidi wrote that he had been 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 had refused to release him.
Saeidi was arrested by security forces on 8 October 2019 along with four other civilians, Nayeb Hajizadeh, Kamran Ghasemi, Keyvan Rashozadeh and Abdolaziz Mohammadpour, 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 of them 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, while the sentences of the other three were reduced to seven years and six months in prison.
