Iranian Kurd Executed After Sham Trial, 13 Years on Death Row

Amnesty International has expressed horror at the recent execution of an Iranian Kurdish man who was sentenced to death 13 years ago following a trial marred by serious rights violations.

“@amnesty is horrified by the arbitrary execution on 2 January of Davoud Abdollahi, from Iran’s Kurdish Sunni minority, who was convicted of “corruption on earth” and sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial,” the London-based human rights group said on the social media platform X on January 8.

Abdollahi was hanged in Ghezelhesar prison, near Tehran, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) group.

Its director, Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam, said in a statement on January 2 that the man had been sentenced to death “based on confessions obtained under torture and without a fair trial.”

“His execution, like that of other prisoners of conscience, is an extrajudicial killing,” he added.

Abdollahi and six other Sunni Kurdish men – Anwar Khezri, Ayoub Karimi, Farhad Salimi, Ghassem Abesteh, Kamran Sheikheh and Khosrow Basharat – were arrested in December 2009 and January 2010 in West Azerbaijan province.

The seven men were taken to a Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in the provincial capital, Urmia, and accused of membership in “Salafist groups,” which the defendants denied. 

They were convicted of “corruption on Earth” and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran in 2018.

In 2020, the Supreme Court upheld their convictions and death sentences, and rejected their request for retrial.

The presiding judge had barred the defendants’ lawyer from speaking at the trial. 

At least four of the men said in open letters that agents of the Ministry of Intelligence repeatedly subjected them to torture during interrogations. 

Abdollahi is the third defendant in the case to be executed in the last two months, according to IHRNGO. Abesteh and Karimi were executed in Ghezelhesar prison in November, while Khezri, Salimi, Basharat and Sheikheh are at risk of imminent execution, the group said.

IHRNGO has recorded more than 40 executions in Iran since the beginning of the year.

"The international community, especially governments adhering to human rights principles that have diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, should break their silence in the face of the wave of executions and show an appropriate response," Amiry-Moghaddam said.

Ethnic minorities in Iran, including Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, Baluch and Turkmen, face discrimination which curtails their access to education, employment and political office, and are also disproportionately affected by death sentences imposed for vague charges such as “corruption on Earth,” according to Amnesty International. 

Authorities also subject members of religious minorities such as Sunnis, Baha’is, Christians, Gonabadi Dervishes, Jews and Yaresan to discrimination in law and practice, arbitrary detention, unjust prosecutions, torture and other ill-treatment for professing or practising their faith.