Amnesty International has made a new call to the Iranian authorities to immediately halt all executions and commute all death sentences as concern grows about two women and other prisoners who may be at imminent risk of execution. The organization is also urging the authorities to review and repeal death penalty laws, to disclose full details of all death sentences and executions, and to join the growing international trend towards abolition.
Two women are feared to be at imminent risk of execution. Zeyneb Celaliyan, a Kurdish political activist, was sentenced to death in early 2009 after being convicted of “enmity against God”, while Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, whose conviction of “adultery while being married” was upheld in May 2007, could be executed by stoning at any time.
Prisoners on death row are often not informed when they are due to be executed until the last minute, adding to their suffering and that of their families. Sometimes their lawyers are not informed 48 hours in advance, as is required by Iranian law.
The Kurdish Human Right Project (KHRP) has written to the UN to call on them to urge Iran to stop the impending executions of Ms Zeyneb Celaliyan and fifteen other political prisoners convicted of ‘mobarabeh’ (‘enmity against God’).
KHRP had already expressed its concerns at the detention, treatment, trial and imminently feared execution of several Kurdish political prisoners, including Ms Celaliyan, in May. She is one of many activists who KHRP believes has been targeted by the Iranian Authorities because of her Kurdish ethnicity and suspected political activism. She was arrested in 2008 after reportedly writing and creating posters for the Kurdish resistance movement, the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), with whom she was alleged to have ties.
Ms. Celaliyan was held incommunicado in a Ministry of Detention facility for eight months before being sentenced to death by the Kermanshah Revolutionary Court. During her brief trial — lasted only a few minutes — she was barred from access to her lawyer and was told to ‘shut up’ by the sentencing judge after making a plea to say goodbye to her family.
The latest cases continue after five Kurdish activists, four of whom PJAK’s member —Ferzad Kemanger, Eli Heyderiyan, Ferhad Wekili and Mehdi Eslamian, and a woman, Shîrîn Elemhulî — were executed at Evin prison in Tehran on Sunday 9 May.