Kurdish political prisoner Mohammad Nazari, held at Urmia Prison, has been denied hospitalization to receive tests for a tumor in his stomach, according to his lawyer.
Mohammad Hossein Aghasi said that after getting an MRI and some tests in a hospital a month and a half ago, the doctor discovered a tumor in his stomach. He should be admitted for treatment that day, but the agents who were accompanying him said they had to return him to prison unless a judge grants him permission.
He was scheduled to go back to the hospital on July 18, but so far this has not happened.
A 48-year-old ethnic Azeri Turk, Mohammad Nazari has been imprisoned since 1994, for his alleged membership in an Iranian Kurdish opposition group.
Since his arrest on May 30, 1994, by agents of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry in the city of Boukan, West Azerbaijan Province, Nazari has not been granted furlough not even to attend the funerals of his father, mother and sister and brother.
He has spent time behind bars in Mahabad Central Prison, Raja’i Shahr Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, and currently in Urmia Central Prison.
In November 1994, Branch One of the Orumiyeh Revolutionary Court sentenced Nazari to death for his alleged membership in the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI).
Although his appeal failed, in 1999 a pardon issued on the occasion of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha reduced his sentence to life imprisonment.
In an open letter from prison dated October 18, 2017, Nazari said he was eligible for release based on articles 10, 99, 120 and 728 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, but so far the authorities have not acknowledged Nazari’s eligibility.
