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Kamran Sheikha, a Kurdish Death Row Prisoner, has been transferred to Mahabad Prison from Qezel Hesar Prison

08:47 - 3/6/2024

Kamran Sheikha, a Kurdish Death Row Prisoner, has been transferred to Mahabad Prison from Qezel Hesar Prison

Hana: On Saturday, June 1, 2024, Kamran Sheikha, a Kurdish death row prisoner from Mahabad, was transferred from Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj to Mahabad Prison for unknown reasons.

It is worth noting that on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, following the execution of Kurdish ideological prisoner Khosrow Basharat, a native of Mahabad, in Qezel Hesar Prison, Kamran Sheikha was moved to solitary confinement for the execution of his sentence but was later returned to the general ward.

Additionally, six of Kamran Sheikha’s co-defendants, namely Qasem Abesta, Anwar Khezri, Farhad Salimi, Eyub Karimi, Davood Abdollahi, and Khosrow Basharat, were executed on November 5, November 29, and January 2, 2023, and May 1 and May 15, 2024, after spending 14 years in Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj.

According to this report, Kamran Sheikha, along with six Sunni citizens named Anwar Khezri, Qasem Abesta, Farhad Salimi from Saqqez, Eyub Karimi, Khosrow Basharat, and Davood Abdollahi from Mahabad, were arrested by security forces in December 2009.

Reports indicate that following fundamentally unfair trials in which the judge barred their lawyer from defending them, they were sentenced to death in June 2018 by Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on charges of "corruption on earth" and crimes related to national security. After their arrest between mid-December 2009 and early February 2010 in West Azerbaijan Province, the seven were transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Orumieh and accused of membership in "Salafi groups," an allegation each of them denied.

In July 2018, another court in West Azerbaijan Province sentenced Kamran Sheikha to death on charges of premeditated murder of a man who had died in a vehicular accident, while Anwar Khezri and Khosrow Basharat were sentenced to imprisonment as his accomplices.

Despite numerous serious violations of fair trial standards, in September 2020, Branch 38 of the Supreme Court rejected their request for a retrial. On February 3, 2021, Branch 41 of the Supreme Court upheld the sentences against these seven prisoners.