Young Kurdish athlete Payam Hosseini arrested to serve prison sentence

Hengaw – Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Payam Hosseini, a young Kurdish athlete from Kamyaran who was arrested during the September 2025 crackdown, has been taken into custody to serve a one-year prison sentence.

According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Hosseini was summoned to the Criminal Sentences Enforcement Office on Saturday, July 25, 2026, where he was arrested and transferred to Kamyaran Central Prison to serve his sentence.

Hengaw has learned that the Kamyaran Revolutionary Court previously sentenced Hosseini to one year in prison and five years of suspended imprisonment on the charge of "membership in the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI)." The sentence was issued while he was under the age of 18.

Iranian Intelligence Department forces arrested Hosseini at his family home in Kamyaran on Thursday, September 11, 2025, when he was 17 years old. He spent 41 days in detention, including 37 days in solitary confinement, before being released on bail of 2 billion tomans pending the completion of judicial proceedings.

Hosseini is an 18-year-old kung fu athlete from the village of Loon Sadat in Kamyaran County, Kurdistan Province.