Kurdish activist Idris Menbari imprisoned to serve sentence
Hengaw – Saturday, November 8, 2025
Civil activist and volunteer Kurdish-language teacher Idris Menbari, a board member of the Nojin cultural organization, has been arrested to serve a one-year prison sentence and transferred to Sanandaj (Sine) Central Prison.
According to information obtained by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Menbari was taken into custody after being summoned by the Sentence Enforcement Office of the Sanandaj Court and sent to the city’s central prison to serve his term on Saturday, November 8, 2025.
Menbari had earlier received an official notice from the Criminal Enforcement Branch of the Sanandaj Court, instructing him to report to the branch on November 8 to begin serving his sentence. The order was issued on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
In a ruling issued in December 2024, after the Court of Appeal overturned his previous 10-year prison sentence and referred the case to a parallel branch, the First Branch of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Karami, sentenced Menbari to one year in prison and one year of suspended imprisonment for a period of three years on charges of “forming a group with the intent to disrupt national security.”
Menbari and fellow activist Srveh Pourmohammadi were initially sentenced by the same court in November 2023 to 10 years in prison. The ruling was later annulled by the Court of Appeal, and the case was returned to the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court for retrial.
Earlier, Branch 106 of the Sanandaj Criminal Court, presided over by Judge Bahman Omidzadeh, had sentenced Menbari to one year in prison for “disturbing public order,” including time previously spent in detention, along with exile to Dizelabad Prison in Kermanshah (Kermashan) and 40 lashes as a Grade 6 discretionary punishment.
Menbari was previously arrested by security forces in December 2022 and released 43 days later, in January 2023, upon posting bail of one billion tomans pending trial.
He had also been arrested in May 2019 during a raid by agents of the Sanandaj Intelligence Department, along with two other members of the Nojin organization.
