Political Prisoner Transferred to Unknown Location

HRANA,

On January 30, 2011, HRANA reported that prison guards transferred death row Kurdish Iranian citizen Loqman Moradi from ward 4 in Rajai Shahr ‘Gohardasht’ prison to an undisclosed location.

This is not the first time a political prisoner ha been transferred secretly before execution. In the past month, the same action was taken for Hossein Khezri and Ali Saremi before they were illegally executed, without any notification given to their lawyers or families. In fact, authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have not even officially confirmed Hossein Khezri’s.

On December 28, 2010, Iran Daily, quoting Judge Abolghasssem Salavati, the head of branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court reported that Zaniar Moradi and Loqman Moradi were sentenced to death by public hanging on the charges of “Moharebeh”[Enmity with God] and “Causing sedition and depravity on Earth”.

On December 22, 2010, in a trial that lasted 20 minutes, Judge Salavati found these two Kurdish Iranian citizens guilty of being members of “Komeleh” (a Kurdish opposition party) and of participating in the July 5, 2010 assassination of Saadi, the son of Marivan’s Friday Prayer Imam, and two other individuals named Hadi and Abdollah.

The sentences have yet to be announced to the defendants and lawyer. In a letter published by human rights groups, the two prisoners wrote that they were forced to confess to the [false] allegations after being threatened with rape by the use of a bottle.

Loqman Moradi has already been arrested three times for engaging in activities in support of the Kurdish opposition [to the Islamic Republic of Iran].