Amnesty International Expresses Concern Over Imminent Execution of Kamran Sheikhe

On Thursday, May 17, Amnesty International announced that Kamran Sheikhe, a prisoner from Mahabad and the last defendant in a case where six others have already been executed, has been transferred to solitary confinement. This international human rights organization wrote on X: "In the early hours of today, Kamran Sheikhe, the last survivor of a group (of seven sentenced to death), was transferred to solitary confinement, raising concerns that he is at imminent risk of execution." Amnesty International has urged the global community to immediately pressure the Islamic Republic to halt executions in Iran. The organization also described the 'arbitrary' execution of Khosrow Basharat, a Kurdish political prisoner and another member of this group of defendants, as 'shocking.' Khosrow Basharat was executed after 14 years in prison. According to reports, Mr. Basharat was transferred to solitary confinement on May 1 for the execution of his sentence and met with his family for the last time on Monday. The Islamic Republic of Iran had previously executed six other Kurdish prisoners with a shared case between November and February of last year, a matter that drew widespread criticism from international human rights organizations. These seven individuals were arrested in December 2009 on charges of murdering Imam Abdul Rahim Tina, the prayer leader of the Khalafay Rashidin Mosque in Mahabad, who was killed by unknown individuals in 2008, and were interrogated for months at the Urmia Intelligence Department detention center. Four of the defendants in this case, including Qasem Abasteh, Ayoub Karimi, Davood Abdollahi, and Farhad Salimi, were executed in the second half of last year, and the sentence of Anvar Khazari was also carried out two weeks ago. With the execution of Khosrow Basharat on Wednesday morning, all six defendants in this long-standing case have been executed. Human rights organizations have repeatedly criticized the 'severe torture' of these prisoners and the extraction of 'forced confessions' from them. The mentioned defendants were sentenced to death in 2015 by Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Judge Moghiseh, on charges such as 'acting against national security,' 'propaganda against the regime,' 'membership in Salafi groups,' and 'corruption on earth.' Reports indicate that the Supreme Court annulled this sentence in 2018, but in June 2019, they were once again sentenced to death by Judge Salavati, and the Supreme Court confirmed this sentence in February of that year. Following the onset of the 'Women, Life, Freedom' protests, the officials of the Islamic Republic have accelerated the implementation of death sentences, with at least 834 people executed in Iran in 2023. The Iran Human Rights Organization announced on May 2 of this year that the Islamic Republic executed one person every five hours from April 17 to May 1. According to this human rights organization, during the mentioned two weeks, the death sentences of 63 prisoners in Iranian prisons were carried out.