Hamzeh Darvish, a Sunni prisoner, has been on a hunger strike in Lakan Prison in Rasht since Wednesday, March 9, 2022.
By going on a hunger strike, he is protesting the court’s handing down of a prison sentence for him, while he did not have access to a lawyer. He was also denied the right to object to the sentence.
The First Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Rasht recently sentenced Hamzeh Darvish to 2 years and one month in prison based on a new case opened for him while in detention.
The verdict issued on March 5, sentenced Mr. Darvish to 18 months and one day in prison on charges of insulting Khamenei and Khomeini, the mullahs’ supreme leaders. He received an additional 7 months and 16 days in prison for “propaganda against the state.”
The court notified Hamzeh Darvish of his new sentence on March 9.
The new case was opened for Mr. Darvish upon a complaint filed by the Ministry of Intelligence citing an audio file from Mr. Hamzeh circulating on the internet in which he complained about his detention conditions.
His interrogation session was held online in Branch 16 of the Rasht Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office on February 3, 2022.
Hamzeh Darvish, 28, is from Talesh. In remarks made in 2014, he declared that fundamentalist forces had deceitfully dragged him to Turkey and then to Syria. He spent some time in ISIS prison and then fled to Iran and introduced himself to the security forces, and even had the chance to be released on bail and work as a quail breeder.
Hamzeh Darvish was re-arrested a year later and sentenced to 15 years in prison while his trial was full of ambiguities.
Mr. Darvish was transferred from Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj to the Lakan Prison of Rasht on May 11, 2020 and transferred to Lakan Prison in Rasht. He was confined in solitary cells for the second time on September 30, 2020, and finally transferred to Hall 10 of this prison on December 14, 2020.
