Kurdish political activist from Maku
Detention date: 26 February 2008
Charged with: Membership of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) and taking up arms against the Islamic Republic of Iran
Sentence: Life sentence
Current status: Imprisoned in Yazd Prison

Zeynab Jalalian is a woman political prisoner born in 1982 and comes from the village of Dim Qeshlaq in Maku. She was arrested on 26 February 2008 by the Ministry of Intelligence in Kermanshah and was subjected to severe physical and psychological tortures for about three months in the detention centre of the office of intelligence ministry, being accused of “membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK)”. She was then transferred to the Juvenile Detention Centre of Kermanshah.

Jalalian was sentenced to death on 3 December 2008 on charges of “membership of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK)” and “taking up arms against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, by Branch 1 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Kermanshah, presided over by Judge Moradi.

After appealing against the sentence, Jalalian’s case was referred to Branch 4 of the Court of Appeals of Kermanshah and the sentence was upheld. In 2009, the ruling was approved by the Supreme Court of Iran.

In March 2010, Jalalian was unexpectedly transferred from the prison of Kermanshah to the ward 209 of Evin prison in Tehran. After five months, she was returned to the Dizelabad prison in Kermanshah.

Following the efforts of her family, lawyer, and human rights activists, Jalalian’s death sentence was dropped to a life sentence in November 2011, with the pardon of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Later, in December 2014, with the consent of the prosecutor’s office and the office of the intelligence ministry, she was transferred from Kermanshah to the prison of Khoy.

It should be noted that Amir Salar Davoodi, one of Jalalian’s lawyers, who played an active role in her case, was arrested on 20 November 2018 by forces of the Ministry of Intelligence. In June 2019, Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran sentenced him to 111 lashes and 30 years in prison, of which 15 years are enforceable. In her letters and messages from prison, Zeynab Jalalian strongly condemned the arrest and sentencing of her lawyer.

Jalalian is currently suffering from pterygium and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), and since the summer of 2019, she has been suffering from severe headaches, which, according to doctors, are caused by migraine.

She had been on a medicine strike since February 2017 to protest the lack of medical care for her gastrointestinal disease and the condition of her eyes. With the severe headaches and insistence of her family, she agreed to take medicine for migraine, but she did not receive them due to the obstruction of justice by prison officials.

In July 2019, a delegation of inspectors of the organization of prisons visited Khoy Prison. One of the inspectors told Jalalian that she would be deprived of medical treatment until she published a letter expressing her remorse. But she refused to do so. The Ministry of Intelligence had also said earlier that the condition for transferring her to the hospital was if she agreed to an interview on TV.