Around 10:30 p.m. on Monday, April 21, the deputy prosecutor of West Azerbaijan province informed the family of Hamid Hosseinnezhad Heydaranlou, a Kurdish political prisoner sentenced to death, that he had been transferred to Tehran and executed earlier that same Saturday.
The family of this Kurdish citizen, whose execution has been confirmed by judiciary officials but who have not yet received his body or been informed of his burial location, has been threatened with “serious consequences” if they inform the public about it.
Osman Mozayyen, the lawyer of Mr. Hosseinnezhad, stated: “No official has yet informed the defense counsel about how or on what day Hamid Hosseinnezhad was executed.” He referred to the case of Heydar Abdollahpour, another Kurdish political prisoner who was executed by firing squad in 2020, and whose death certificate was shown to his family 44 days later. He added, “This same court branch previously carried out Abdollahpour’s execution and never handed over the body to the family.”
Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also confirmed on Monday night that the family of this Kurdish citizen and father of three had been informed of his execution.
On the afternoon of Saturday, April 18, following efforts by Osman Mozayyen and a family protest outside the prison, Hamid was allowed a brief phone call in which he said he was “safe” and asked his brother to look after their other brother, Esmaeil, who had recently attempted suicide due to the stress over Hamid’s death sentence. This was the last time the family heard from him before his covert execution.
Hamid Hosseinnezhad Heydaranlou, a Kurdish citizen and father of three, worked as a kolbar (a cross-border porter) before his arrest. He was detained on April 13, 2023, while allegedly “crossing the border illegally.” Initially charged with smuggling, he was granted bail, but instead, he spent 11 months and 12 days in detention at the Ministry of Intelligence facility, where he was held to extract confessions against himself.
He was accused of involvement in the killing of eight Iranian border guards. However, Hamid Hosseinnezhad was illiterate and had difficulty speaking Persian. As a result, all of his interrogation documents and the confessions used as primary evidence by the so-called Revolutionary Court to sentence him to death were written by his interrogators. He merely affixed his fingerprint to them.
Even in a video published by Iran’s state broadcaster and the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency, which they claim shows his “confession” to the killing of border guards, he struggles to speak Persian. His words are broken, difficult to understand, and at times incomprehensible.
Interrogators told Mr. Hosseinnezhad that his brother had died in a car accident and that his mother had suffered a stroke. They told him that if he wanted to attend his brother’s funeral, he must sign whatever they told him to.
One of the interrogators also promised him that if he accepted the charges, they would ensure that he would receive no more than a three-year sentence.
This is not the first time Iran’s judiciary has secretly executed citizens while deceiving their families and the public. Previously, especially during the protests following the killing of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, the judiciary executed young protesters sentenced to death—including Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashimi, and Saeed Yaghoubi—on May 19, 2023, despite the usual practice of not carrying out executions on Fridays and amid efforts to mislead public opinion.
