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I Still Don’t Know if They’ve Killed My Son or Not

June 12, 2020
Mahrokh Gholamhosseinpour
6 min read
Hedayat Abdolahpour's father told IranWire that The Revolutionary Court of Urmia told Hedayat Abdolahpour's father that his son had been executed. Authorities did not say where he was buried
Hedayat Abdolahpour's father told IranWire that The Revolutionary Court of Urmia told Hedayat Abdolahpour's father that his son had been executed. Authorities did not say where he was buried

The father of Hedayat Abdolahpour, who authorities say was executed in secret in May, has told IranWire that his son could still be alive. 

Abubakr Abdolahpour said Urmia's Revolutionary Court had informed him on June 11 that his son had been executed about 20 days before and authorities could not tell him the location where he was buried.

Hedayat Abdolahpour was arrested on suspicion of being involved in a bloody clash between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Peshmerga forces and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in Qara-Seql near Oshnavieh in Western Azerbaijan on June 15, 2016. His family insist that he was not in the area on the day of the clash, and have been trying to prove his innocence for four years.

Two days before receiving the news of his execution from Branch 9 of the Revolutionary Court, Hedayat Abdolahpour's father Abubakr Abdolahpour responded to a request from the Oshnavieh prosecutor's office for him to report to the court in Urmia. After a short time at the office he was told, “go home and return tomorrow.” 

“The next day, I went back and was told that my son had been executed. I said, show me a video or a photo that confirms what you say. I asked how they could do that without meeting with and informing the lawyer and the family. They said, ‘because your son’s case was a [national] security case, his sentence was carried out quietly.’”

But Abdolahpour says, in the absence of any evidence, he cannot be totally sure that his son has been executed.

"People come to our door to offer condolences and sympathy, and I'm helpless,” he told IranWire. “Has my son really been executed? Or are they mocking me and trying to harass me? Although they did tell me directly his sentence had been handed down, they did not give me any substantiated evidence. If it's a lie, I don't understand why they are trying to harass me. If they really executed him, why did they deprive us of a last meeting?”

 

Framed for a Crime he Didn't Commit

He explained that his son had been framed, and forced to take the blame for the conflict in 2016. "They set him up. Our house is only 15 meters away from the Revolutionary Guards base in Oshnavieh. My son was outside his shop and was repairing the thermostat and a car door. The night before the fight, someone called my son and told him that he needed help, that his car had broken down and he needed a mechanic. He left the house on this pretext, but I am absolutely sure that my son did not have a weapon, that he had no intention of fighting. Fighting was not in his nature. He returned at six o'clock the next morning and was at his shop at the time the incident happened. The people of Oshnavieh, the Friday prayers Imam, the elders of the community, and the people of Esteshadiyeh neighborhood confirmed that Hedayat was at his shop during the conflict, and they signed a statement saying this. But despite all this, they filed a case against my son at the insistence of the IRGC.

"My son was accused of ‘armed uprising,’ but I know he was innocent, and I will try to prove his innocence for as long as I live.” 

He also told IranWire that interrogators tried to make his son confess to his involvement in the clash and tortured him badly that he lost his hearing.

Hedayat Abdolahpour’s six-year-old daughter, Kordestan, has not been told what has happened. She still tries to reach her father on the phone and waits for him to call. Her brother, 12, is more aware of the situation. Abubakr Abdolahpour says his grandson sits in the corner and cries.

"Hedayat's case was heard at Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia," his father told IranWire. "He faced charges of ‘belonging to an opposition party’. He was sentenced to death, and we appealed. The sentence was overturned in Branch 47 of the Supreme Court, but after that, in a third trial, Hedayat's case was transferred to another branch of the court in Urmia. We heard that the IRGC was putting pressure [on the court] and insisting that a death sentence be issued. Hedayat was sentenced to death for a second time.”

At the time of Hedayat Abdolahpour’s sentencing, six other defendants were given long prison terms for taking part in an armed attack on members of the Revolutionary Guards. Local media reported that one of the men was actually in another city at the time of the crime.

 

A Popular, Well-Respected Man

One of Hedayat Abdolahpour’s customers in Oshnavieh told IranWire that he made a point of talking to the car mechanic's children whenever he went into the shop. The man, who said his name was Nazir, said Abdolahpour was a talented professional who was liked and respected by the people of the town. He was humble, non-violent and generally calm. There was no way he was a militant, Nazir said, and the local people collected signatures for a petition calling for his release, along with other efforts to support him. They all knew him and knew he wouldn’t take part in violence, Nazir said.

Hedayat's brother, Farhad Abdolahpour, said he was not ruling out the possibility that his brother might still be alive, adding that there had been other cases where authorities had informed a family that they had executed their child, but it later became clear that the prisoner was still alive.

"Saman Nasim's family was told that he had been executed, and all the media outlets reported his execution, but he is now out of prison and free, with God's help,” he told IranWire. "We also have cases in which the news of someone’s execution has been strongly denied [by authorities], but some time later it has been discovered that they had been executed. The Islamic Republic is unpredictable, so I can't say for sure what happened to my brother.”

Farhad Abdolahpour says once the story broke that there had been clashes, the Revolutionary Guards wanted to ensure it quickly identified those responsible.”The Guards made hasty arrests. It did not matter to them who was really involved in the conflict. They didn’t find any weapons on Hedayat. He did not have a membership card for any political group, so they couldn’t say he was an official member of a certain group and was involved in the conflict."

Hedayat Abdolahpour had at least two lawyers working on his case, but his brother says none of them were informed about the execution. He says that, according to legal procedures, authorities should have at least informed the two most recent lawyers on the case, Maziar Tataei and Osman Mazin. He says they should have been contacted about holding a final meeting with family members, and about Abdolahpour’s will and final wishes.

Osman Mazin, one of Hedayat Abdolahpour’s lawyers, released a video in Kurdish denying that Hedayat Abdolahpour had anything to do with the "armed uprising" allegations and insisting that he should not be executed.

He explained that he had been unaware of his client's condition for the last few weeks, despite efforts to obtain information, but that the prosecutor for Urmia had assured him that his client's death sentence had not yet been carried out.

Like Hedayat’s family, Mazin says he does not know whether his client is alive or dead. All he knows, he said, was that Hedayat Abdolahpour did not take up arms and join any conflict in Qara-Seql, and there was no evidence to back up this claim, or to make the death sentence enforceable.

 

 

 

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