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 the Kurdistan of Turkey, are at imminent risk of being separated from their mothers and transferred to the Welfare Organisation. 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 will soon be removed from their mothers and handed over to the Welfare Organisation.

Prison officials reportedly told the women that children are allowed to remain with their mothers in prison only until the age of two. As the children have now turned three, the authorities have ruled that they can no longer stay with their mothers.

The families of these four Kurdish political prisoners live in the Kurdistan of Turkey and have so far been unable to travel to Iran to assume custody of the children.

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 Mariwan, 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.