Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou, born in 1985 and the father of three children from the village of Segrik in Chaldoran, West Azerbaijan Province, had worked as a fuel porter and border trader in recent years.

Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was arrested by border guards at the Chaldoran border along with several Afghan nationals on 13 April 2023 and taken to the Chaldoran Border Guards Detention Centre, where he was interrogated for several hours before his detention order was changed to bail.

However, the bail was not accepted due to the issuance of an arrest warrant at the request of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

He was then transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention facility in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province.

He was held in the Ministry’s detention facility for 11 months and 10 days, during which time he was subjected to severe physical and psychological torture to force him to confess to participating in an armed clash between forces of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Iranian border guards, a confrontation that had resulted in the death of eight border guards. 

Despite his lack of sufficient literacy, he was forced to sign pre-prepared documents by security interrogators.

During this time, he was denied access to a lawyer and contact with his family, managing only a short telephone call to his family after eight months of detention. 

After 11 months and 10 days, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was transferred from the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Orumiyeh to the city’s central prison.

Although the Ministry of Intelligence opposed his right to have a chosen lawyer, the case was referred from Branch 10 of the Orumiyeh Prosecutor’s Office to Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Orumiyeh with an indictment issued.

The court session was held on 18 July 2024 at Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Orumiyeh, presided over by Judge Najafzadeh. 

The trial lasted only a few minutes, and although Hossennezhad Heidaranlou rejected all the accusations and informed the court of the torture he had suffered while in detention, the court convicted him of “armed inssurection” (baghi) through membership of the PKK and sentenced him to death, based on the “judge’s knowledge”.

In the issued verdict, the court, relying on the Ministry of Intelligence’s experts, noted that because his brother-in-law, Mostafa Nouri, had been killed in 2015 by border guards while trading in Chaldoran’s border areas, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou had developed animosity towards the border guards. 

It was thus alleged that he had collaborated with PKK forces during the clash between them and the border guards.

Following an appeal against the verdict in August 2024, the case was referred to the Supreme Court, and after the competent authority was determined, it was passed on to Branch Nine, which upheld the death sentence without considering the defendant’s arguments. The ruling was officially delivered to him in prison on 26 March 2025.

On 16 April 2025, Hosseinnezhad Heidaranlou was transferred to solitary confinement in Orumiyeh Central Prison in preparation for his execution.

On 21 April, his family was summoned to the Orumiyeh Prosecutor’s Office and informed that the prisoner had been executed.

The Deputy Prosecutor, Behzad Sarkhanlou, informed them that the prisoner had been transferred from Orumiyeh to Tehran and that his death sentence had been carried out.

Additional Information:

– In April 2025, the death sentence was upheld by Branch Nine of the Supreme Court.

– On 16 April 2025, the date of execution (set for April 18) was officially communicated to the prisoner’s lawyer, and the political prisoner was simultaneously transferred to solitary confinement.

– On 17 April 2025, the family was granted a final visit, lasting just 10 minutes. During this brief meeting, the prisoner – shackled in handcuffed – spoke of the strong likelihood that his execution would be carried out in the early hours of 18 April. He once again denied all charges brought against him and condemned the case as fabricated, accusing the security forces of orchestrating a scenario against him.

– On 18 April 2025, while family members and relatives had been staging a sit-in for several days outside Orumiyeh Central Prison, the prison director announced that the execution had been halted by order of the prosecutor and that the political prisoner had been transferred to an undisclosed location. In a brief telephone call lasting only a few seconds, a person identifying himself as “Hamid” confirmed he was still alive and urged his family to continue seeking information about his fate. However, it was later revealed that the call had been a ploy by the Ministry of Intelligence interrogators aimed at ending the family’s protest, and it is believed that the prisoner was in fact executed in the early hours of 18 April.

1. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was founded in 1978 with the aim of creating a unified and independent Kurdistan. Although its origin and leadership were in the Kurdistan of Turkey, its activities gradually extended to other parts of Kurdistan, including Iranian Kurdistan. From its inception until the late 1990s, Marxism-Leninism was the dominant ideology of the party. 

Abdullah Öcalan, known as Apo, the leader of the PKK, was captured in 1999 through a joint operation by the Turkish government and several other countries in Kenya. He is currently serving a life sentence in solitary confinement on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara. 

Since 2000, influenced by Öcalan’s writings and ideas in prison, the PKK has aimed to establish “democratic confederalism” in the four parts of Kurdistan: Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, and works towards this goal. The headquarters of this party is in the mountainous border regions between the Kurdistan of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.

2. Articles 287 of the Islamic Penal Code: “A group that engages in armed insurrection against the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran is considered rebellious, and if they use weapons, the members shall be sentenced to the death penalty.”