Three Kurdish political prisoners Majid Tibash, Safar Nouri, and Farhad Nouri have been sent on temporary leave on 3 May from the political ward of Orumiyeh Central Prison.

Majid Tibash, a Kurdish civilian from the village of Dizaj in the Margavar region of Orumiyeh, was arrested on 26 December 2018, after being summoned to the office of the intelligence ministry in Orumiyeh. He was released on bail after 22 days in detention.

In March 2019, Branch 3 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh, presided over by Judge Najafi, sentenced Tibash to five years in prison on charges of “membership in the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan”. The Court of Appeals of Orumiyeh later commuted this sentence to four years imprisonment after he appealed against the ruling.

On 8 July 2019, Tibash was transferred to Orumiyeh Central Prison to serve his sentence and has been denied temporary leave ever since, despite his poor physical condition and having gone through surgery.

Safar Nouri and Farhad Nouri were arrested on 15 August 2019, along with two other civilians named Ali Azizi and Parviz Nouri from the village of Anbi in Orumiyeh, by the forces of the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Orumiyeh.

The four Kurdish civilians were transferred to the Orumiyeh Central Prison after 28 days of interrogation in the IRGC’s detention centre and were released on bails of 500 million Iranian Tomans – approximately 20,000 USD – in the fall that followed.

The trial of these four civilians was held in September 2020 in Branch 2 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh, during which Parviz Nouri was acquitted, while Safar Nouri, Farhad Nouri, and Ali Azizi were charged with “acting against national security” through “membership in a Kurdish opposition party”. They were sentenced to five years in prison, each.

After they appealed against the verdict, the case was referred to Branch 13 of the Court of Appeals of Orumiyeh, as a result of which the sentences of Safar Nouri and Farhad Nouri were reduced to one year in prison, and Ali Azizi was acquitted.