Iran: Political Prisoner Haidar Ghorbani Secretly Hanged in Sanandaj
Written by
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
NCRI logoCall for condemning executions and taking urgent action to save death row prisoners
• The continuation and expansion of political and economic relations with the clerical regime should be predicated on a halt on executions and torture
• The regime’s human rights dossier must be referred to the UN Security Council for four decades of crimes against humanity and genocide and its leaders, especially Khamenei, Ebrahim Raisi, and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, should be brought to justice.
Despite widespread domestic and international calls, the clerical regime executed Haidar Ghorbani, a Kurdish political prisoner, in Sanandaj today, Sunday, December 19, 2021, without prior notice to his lawyer and family. According to the official news agency, IRNA, today, the regime’s judiciary in Kurdistan Province announced in a statement that Haidar Ghorbani’s execution had been carried out on the charges of Moharebeh (waging war against God), complicity in the murder of three Kurdish citizens, and his membership in the Democratic Party of Kurdistan.
The clerical regime even refused to hand over Haider’s body to his family and only informed them of his burial place. A large group of people in Sanandaj gathered in front of Haidar Ghorbani’s house to express their anger against his brutal execution.
In recent months, experts, authorities, and international human rights organizations have repeatedly called for Ghorbani’s death sentence to be overturned, stressing that his death sentence was based on confessions obtained under torture.
On August 8, 2020, the Iranian Resistance called on the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner on human rights, the UN Human Rights Council, and other human rights organizations and bodies to take urgent action to prevent the execution of Ghorbani and save his life.
The inhuman clerical regime, unable to withstand the growing popular uprisings and terrified of its overthrow, has found the only way out in intensifying executions, torture and repression. This was Khamenei’s goal in appointing Ebrahim Raisi, who is notoriously known for his direct role in the 1988 massacre. The execution of a political prisoner after five years in captivity, two days after the UN General Assembly condemned the brutal and systematic human rights violations in Iran, reflects this policy. Since November 21, 2021, alone, 35 executions have been registered.
The Iranian Resistance urges the UN Security Council, the UN Secretary-General, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as the European Union and its member states, to strongly condemn the growing number of executions in Iran and to take immediate action to rescue prisoners on death row. The continuation and expansion of political and economic ties with the religious fascism ruling Iran should be predicted on a halt to executions and torture, the regime’s human rights dossier must be referred to the UN Security Council for four decades of crimes against humanity and genocide and its leaders, especially Khamenei, Ebrahim Raisi, and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, should be brought to justice.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
December 19, 2021