Call to stop execution of Iranian-Kurdish Activist

Shirin Alam Huli

Over two thousand Iranian human rights and social activists have called for the annulment of the preliminary sentence of execution which was issued for Shirin Alam Huli.

Shirin Alam Huli was arrested in the May of 2008 and was sentenced to two years imprisonment for “illegal exit from the country” and also received a death sentence for the charge of “enmity against God through connection with Pezhak organization” in December of 2009.

In their letter the activists maintain that the court’s decision was based on Ms. Alam Huli’s declarations during interrogations but they claim she was “interrogated under torture” and therefore the declaration have no legal validity.

They also add that she was interrogated in Tehran in Persian while she did not have a good command of the language, and “she even had trouble writing for lack of formal education.” The signatories claim the accused has only learned to speak some Persian through her one-year stay in Evin prison.

The letter urges the Islamic Republic authorities to overturn the unjust ruling of the court in consideration of the conditions of the 28-year-old detainee.

Last November, the government executed Ehsan Fatahian an Iranian-Kurdish political activist in Sanadaj for similar charges. The execution was condemned by many prominent reformist political figures and clerics.

Scores of Kurdish political prisoners are currently in Islamic Republic prisons and some are also in imminent danger of execution.