The lawyer of Kurd political prisoner Ramin Hossein Panahi says his client’s appeal to the Supreme Court for a review of his death sentence has been rejected.
Speaking with the state-run ISNA news agency, Hossein Ahmadi Niaz said on May 10, “I will reapply for a retrial because this is the right of the client. I hope that the judges of the Supreme Court will again reopen the hearing with greater precision and by requesting the original case.”
It is said that Kurdistan’s intelligence agencies have instructed Sanandaj Prison authorities to execute Ramin Hossein Panahi after June 15 when the holy month of Ramadan ends.
According to the reports, the Ministry of Intelligence is preparing and providing a documentary on Ramin Hossein Panahi to introduce him as a terrorist person who has taken guns and killed people. Amjad Hossein Panahi, the brother of this political prisoner has assumed that it is believed the Ministry of Intelligence intends to prepare public opinion for Ramin by assembling photographs and films of him.
Amnesty International issued an urgent action on May 21, calling on Iranian authorities to immediately halt plans to carry out the execution of Ramin Hossein Panahi. The statement reads in part; “Iranian Kurdish prisoner Ramin Hossein Panahi, sentenced to death in January 2018, is at imminent risk of execution. The Office for Implementation of Sentences has said that his execution will be carried out soon after the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan on 15 June. He was convicted and sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial.”
Amnesty International further added; “Ramin Hossein Panahi, a 22-year-old man from Iran’s Kurdish minority, was convicted and sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial on 16 January that lasted less than an hour. His family told Amnesty International that he appeared before the Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj with torture marks on his body, but that the court failed to order an investigation into his claims that he had been forced to “confess” to the crime. According to his lawyer, the court convicted and sentenced him to death for “taking up arms against the state” (baqi) merely based on his membership of the banned Kurdish opposition group Komala. No specific evidence was provided linking him to activities involving intentional killing, which is the required threshold defining the “most serious crimes” to which the use of the death penalty must be restricted under international law. Between his arrest and trial, he was allowed one brief meeting with his lawyer, which took place with intelligence officials present. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence in March 2018.”
