Two Kurdish couples from Turkey held in Iranian prisons as their children face separation

Hengaw – Tuesday, October 28, 2025

The two three-year-old children of Rojda Saadon and Safiye Torsu, Kurdish political prisoners from Turkish Kurdistan, have been separated from their mothers and placed in the care of relatives in Turkey. Both women are serving prison sentences alongside their husbands, Fesih Karatash and Mazlom Arli, who are held in Evin and Qarchak Varamin prisons.

According to information obtained by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, authorities in Qarchak and Evin prisons have summoned the four detainees and informed them that their young children were handed to their relatives in Turkey.

The four Kurdish nationals from Turkey had previously lived in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as political refugees. In June 2025, Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Abolqasem Salavati, sentenced each of them to five years in prison—twenty years in total—on charges of “membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).”

Saadon and Torsu, together with their husbands, Arli and Karatash, and their two young children, were arrested on July 24, 2024, in Tabriz while attempting to migrate to Armenia. They were first transferred to the Intelligence Detention Centre in Marivan, then to Sanandaj Prison, and later, on January 26, 2025, to Evin Prison. The two mothers and their children are currently being held in Qarchak Prison under harsh and restrictive conditions.