Pirout Tabnak was arrested by security forces without a warrant at his family home in Oshnavieh on 13 July 2022, and was taken to a security detention centre in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province.

After one month, on 13 August 2022, he was moved to Oshnavieh Prison and was provisionally released on bail on 18 August. During his detention, he was denied the right to meet with his family and access to a lawyer.

In December 2023, he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment by Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Oshnavieh, presided over by Mehdi Rezaei, on charges of “acting against national security” through membership in the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI)

Tabnak was arrested on 20 December 2023 and was transferred to Oshnavieh Prison to serve his sentence.

1. The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) was founded on 16 August 1945, with the aim of gaining autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan. According to the party’s charter, this political organisation, grounded in the “nationalist ideas and organizational structure of the Society for Kurdish Resurrection (KJK) and with a realistic and contemporary approach”, emerged as a modern entity in the political arena. KJK was the founder of the Republic of Kurdistan (22 January 1946 – 15 December 1946) in Mahabad. The republic lasted only 11 months, ending with an attack by the Iranian army, which executed its leaders, including Qazi Muhammad, the party leader and President of Kurdistan.

PDKI went through a period of armed struggle in the late 1960s, marked by internal party disputes, and ultimately, re-emerged as a political party on the eve of the 1979 revolution. Two of its leaders, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and Sadegh Sharafkandi, were assassinated by the Islamic Republic of Iran in Europe in 1989 and 1992, respectively. In 2006, due to heightened internal conflicts, the party split into two factions: the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (HDK). These two factions eventually announced their reunification on 22 August 2022, after 15 years of separation.

The party has declared its ultimate goal as “the establishment of a democratic-socialist society” and its strategic slogan as “securing the rights of the Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan within the framework of a federal democratic system in Iran”. The main headquarters of the PDKI is in Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq.