Arrest

Sorayya Gheitaran, a Kurdish civilian from Piranshahr, West Azerbaijan Province, was arrested without a warrant by the Ministry of Intelligence at her family home in the city on 26 June 2023 and was taken to the Ministry’s detention centre in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province.

After several weeks, she was moved from the detention facility to Orumiyeh Central Prison and released on bail on 16 July 2023.

Judicial Process

In winter 2023, Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan Province, presided over by Judge Sajjad Dousti, sentenced Gheitaran to nine months of imprisonment on charges of “acting against national security” through alleged collaboration with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI).

Current Status

On 3 August 2024, Gheitaran was sent to Orumiyeh Central Prison to serve her sentence.

Notes:

1. Article 499 of the Islamic Penal Code: “Anyone who joins one of the groups, associations, or branches of the associations mentioned in Article 498 shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a period of three months to five years, unless it is proven that they were unaware of the group’s objectives.”

2. 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.