Human rights sources say Iranian authorities have executed Kamran Sheikheh, a Sunni Kurdish prisoner and the last of seven defendants sentenced to death for the 2008 killing of a Muslim cleric.
The reports say Sheikheh was hanged early Thursday in Urmia prison in northwestern Iran.
In recent months, the six other defendants — Qasem Abesteh, Ayoub Karimi, Farhad Salimi, Davood Abdollahi, Anvar Khezri, and Khosrow Besharat — all were executed for their involvement in the death of cleric Abdulrahim Tina, the imam of the Rashideen Caliphate Mosque in Mahabad.
The seven had been convicted of “corruption on Earth.” One report by human rights group Amnesty International said they were sentenced to death “in grossly unfair trials” marred by claims of torture to extract “confessions.”
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the seven denied the charges against them in an open letter.
Sheikheh’s death comes one day after the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, KHRN, said he had been moved from a prison in Mahabad to solitary confinement in Urmia Prison in preparation for his execution.
The KHRN also revealed that prison officials informed the family that Sheikheh, who had been detained for close to 15 years, would be executed at dawn on Thursday.
Arash Sadeghi, a former political prisoner, wrote on social media platform X that “Kamran often sang Kurdish songs in the prison yard — songs for his mother, for Kurdistan, for Lake Zarivar. He longed for them all.”
He added, “Kamran and his six co-defendants were neither terrorists nor murderers. They were souls deeply in love with life.”
Human rights sources said that the seven defendants were subjected to “severe torture” during their detention, and that the judicial process was “highly ambiguous” and contained numerous flaws.
The Campaign for Human Rights in Iran also emphasized that all the death sentences were handed down by “unfair and non-transparent courts that did not meet the basic standards of a fair trial,” and that they lacked “any legal validity.”
A more recent Amnesty report said, “The Iranian authorities refuse to provide public statistics of death sentences and executions" and that the death penalty "is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.”
Kamran Sheikheh and the six other prisoners were sentenced to death in March 2016 by a branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh. The verdict was later overturned by Judge Ali Razini in the Supreme Court.
Their case was then sent to another branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court for reconsideration, with hearings taking place from June 17 to June 19, 2019. Another judge, Abolqasem Salavati, handed down the death sentences.
The case was again reviewed in the Supreme Court under Razini. On Feb. 3, 2020, the high court upheld the death sentences for all seven.
Some information was provided by Agence France-Presse.
