Imminent execution threat: Kurdish political prisoner Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou transferred to solitary confinement
Hengaw: Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Kurdish political prisoner Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou, a 40-year-old father of four from the village of Segrik in Chaldoran, has been transferred to solitary confinement in Urmia Central Prison ahead of his scheduled execution. His life is now in imminent danger.
According to a report received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Hosseinnezhad was moved to solitary confinement on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
A source close to the family told hengaw, during a phone call, the political prisoner's lawyer was informed that the death sentence would be carried out at dawn on Friday, April 18.
Previously, Ghezbest Rouzdar, the mother of Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou, appealed in a video message for help to save her son, who is on death row. She once again emphasized that a case has been fabricated against her Kurdish son.
In mid-July 2024, Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou was sentenced to death by Branch 1 of the Urmia Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Najafzadeh, on the charge of baghi through membership in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), without the necessary evidence and solely based on "the judge’s intuition” (known as elm-e qazi), in a trial that lasted only a few minutes.
Ultimately, Branch 9 of the Supreme Court upheld the verdict and officially communicated it to Heidaranlou in Urmia Central Prison on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
Previously, Hengaw had reported, citing informed sources, that this political prisoner had been denied the right to a chosen attorney both during detention and at trial.
Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou spent 11 months and 10 days of his detention under psychological and physical pressure in the Urmia Intelligence Detention Center. He was denied basic rights, including visits, and was only allowed two phone calls.
He was subjected to severe torture and forced to make a confession against himself, admitting to participating in an armed operation against the Islamic Republic's border forces and killing at least eight of them.
The court, under pressure from the Ministry of Intelligence, claimed that in 2015, Mostafa Nouri, Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou's brother-in-law, was killed during cross-border portering (kolbari) by Iran border forces, and that Hamid had then carried out armed operations against Islamic Republic forces in retaliation.
Hamid Hoseinnezhad Heidaranlou was arrested on Thursday, April 13, 2023, near the Chaldoran border by border forces of the state, along with several Afghan nationals, and was taken to one of the security detention facilities in Chaldoran. Due to an arrest warrant issued by the Ministry of Intelligence, his request for release on bail was denied, and he was transferred to the Intelligence Detention Center in Urmia.
He was eventually transferred from the Urmia Intelligence Detention Center to Ward 2 of the admissions unit of Urmia Central Prison in early February 2025, where he remains detained to this day.
