Kurdish political prisoner Zeynab Jalalian enters 18th year in prison: Latest updates
Hengaw: Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Zeynab Jalalian, a Kurdish political prisoner from Maku, sentenced to life imprisonment, has now spent 17 years (6,209 days) in various Iranian prisons without a single day of furlough. As she enters her 18th year of imprisonment, her health continues to deteriorate in Yazd Central Prison, where she remains denied medical treatment. Additionally, for the past five months, she has been banned from family visits by order of the Ministry of Intelligence.
According to a report received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, 42-year-old Zeynab Jalalian, a resident of Dim Qeshlaq village, Maku County, suffers from multiple serious health conditions, including pterygium (eye disease), oral thrush, asthma, kidney, and gastrointestinal disorders. Her vision is at serious risk, yet prison authorities continue to deny her access to medical treatment.
For more than four years, she has been exiled to Yazd Prison without any legal justification. During this time, she has been denied basic prisoner rights, including the separation of prisoners based on their charges.
Jalalian has been subjected to severe psychological and physical torture during her detention, including threats of sexual assault during interrogations. She has been repeatedly transferred between Khoy, Evin, Kermanshah, Qarchak Varamin, Kerman, and Yazd Prisons.
In 2024, while handcuffed and shackled, she was subjected to repeated interrogations by intelligence officers in Yazd. She was threatened that unless she publicly expressed remorse, she would be permanently deprived of her rights—rights she has already been denied.
During her imprisonment, she has contracted COVID-19 twice but was denied medical leave and received no treatment in either case.
For 17 years, Jalalian’s family has faced immense pressure to remain silent about her deteriorating condition. Security agencies have repeatedly attempted to coerce them into speaking against Kurdish political movements, but they have resisted.
In winter 2022, after her mother, Gozal Hajizadeh, released a video plea for help, four members of her family were arrested. Her mother and brothers—Pasha, Ebrahim, and Yousef Jalalian—were detained in Maku for 24 hours. They were only released after Gozal Hajizadeh lost consciousness in detention.
On February 26, 2008, Zeynab Jalalian was arrested on the Kamyaran-Kermanshah road.
In December 2008, Branch One of the Kermanshah Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Moradi, sentenced her to one year in prison for “illegal exit from the country” and to death for “Moharebeh” (waging war against God) due to membership in the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK).
In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld her death sentence. However, in November 2011, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment under an amnesty order.
For over 17 years, Zeynab Jalalian has endured imprisonment, repeated transfers, torture, medical neglect, and systemic deprivation of her fundamental rights.
