Latest update on Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian: ongoing medical deprivation and deteriorating health condition
Hengaw – Monday, October 27, 2025
Zeinab Jalalian, a Kurdish political prisoner from Maku serving a life sentence, remains denied access to adequate medical care in Yazd Central Prison, despite her critical health condition. Recently, she underwent a fibroid embolization surgery, but was returned to prison only 24 hours after the operation, without completing her treatment or receiving necessary postoperative care.
According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Jalalian, aged 42, from Dim Qeshlaq village in Maku, has suffered for months from multiple uterine fibroids and other serious health problems. Following a deterioration in her condition, she was transferred under tight security and in shackles to a private hospital in Yazd, where the surgery was performed. However, she was quickly taken back to prison despite requiring continued medical supervision.
This transfer came only after growing international pressure, including a joint statement by nine UN Special Rapporteurs on May 1, 2025, who expressed grave concern about Jalalian’s prolonged detention and poor health, urging Iranian authorities to grant her immediate and unconditional access to proper medical care in a civilian and independent hospital.
In addition to uterine fibroids, Zeinab Jalalian suffers from kidney and digestive problems, oral thrush, pterygium (eye growth), impaired vision, and dental infections—all resulting from years of torture and poor prison conditions. She continues to be denied treatment and access to healthcare services by prison authorities.
Over the course of her imprisonment, she has been held in several prisons, including Kermanshah, Evin, Qarchak Varamin, Kerman, and Khoy. On November 9, 2020, she was forcibly and unlawfully transferred from Kermanshah Central Prison to Yazd Central Prison, where she remains detained without separation of political prisoners from ordinary inmates and deprived of her basic rights.
Now entering her 19th year of imprisonment, Jalalian has never been granted furlough or allowed a family visit.
She has endured repeated physical and psychological torture and has been interrogated and threatened with sexual violence by Intelligence Ministry agents in Yazd while handcuffed and shackled.
Zeinab Jalalian was arrested on February 26, 2008, on the Kamyaran–Kermanshah road, and in December 2008, Branch 1 of the Kermanshah Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Moradi, sentenced her to one year in prison for “illegal exit from the country” and to death on the charge of “Waging war against God (moharebeh)” through membership in the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK).
Her death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2009, but in November 2011, it was commuted to life imprisonment under a partial amnesty.
