Political Prisoner Ends Hunger Strike as Orumiyeh Intelligence Pressures Other Prisoners

Over the past few weeks, the Orumiyeh Intelligence Unit has repeatedly summoned three political prisoners and questioned them for “conversing and political discussions with other prisoners,” threatening them with the enforcement of their death sentences and exile to other prisons.

Political prisoner Adel Jalali ended his 11-day hunger strike on March 28 after prison officials at Orumiyeh Central Prison agreed to cooperate with him, a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The source added that the Prison Intelligence Unit has been pressuring four other political prisoners at Orumiyeh, repeatedly summoning three of them and transferring the fourth to a solitary cell.

According to the local human rights activist, security forces arrested Adel Jalali, a resident of Tehran, in October 2011 in the city of Maku. He was interrogated on charges of “acting against national security” and “blasphemy,” and was informed of his charges in court. After eight months’ detention inside Maku Prison, he was transferred to the Orumiyeh Central Prison and sentenced to two years in August 2012 on charges of acting against national security, but the case still awaits the outcome of his blasphemy charges.

The human rights activist said that over the past few weeks, the Orumiyeh Intelligence Unit has repeatedly summoned three political prisoners—Sirvan Nejavi, a political prisoner on death row, Behrouz Alakhani, another political prisoner on death row, and Ali Hossein Andi, a Kurdish citizen of Turkey who was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of cooperating with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—and questioned them for “conversing and political discussions with other prisoners,” threatening them with the enforcement of their death sentences and exile to other prisons. Mohammad Amin Abdollahi, another Kurdish prisoner of conscience who has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and exile to Tabas on charges of “cooperating with Kurdish parties,” was abruptly moved to the facility’s solitary cells on March 30, 2013, and was returned a week later. According to the source, Abdollahi was denied contact or visitation with his family during that week. Abdollahi, a Boukan resident, has been in prison since fall 2005, serving a 15-year imprisonment-in-exile sentence on charges of “moharebeh,” enmity with God.