Student on death row hospitalized
Published: Monday, August 18, 2008
13:30GMT—9:30AM/EST
STUDENT – KURD – HOSPITAL
Washington, 18 August (IranVNC)—Habibollah Latifi, a Kurdish student at the University of Ilam who has been sentenced to death, was transferred from the central prison in Sanandaj to Towhid Hospital in the same northwestern city, the Human Rights Activists in Iran [HRAI] website reports.
Latifi, a 26-year-old student and social activist, was arrested between September and October of last year in his hometown of Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan Province.
Due to a “lack of medical care and unfit facilities”, Latifi was hospitalized in critical condition resulting from “kidney failure, asthma and broken facial bones.”
Last week, Latifi’s defense attorney, Nemat Ahmadi, told Amir Kabir University student newsletter [AUT News] that his client was “tortured and experienced kidney bleeding and pulmonary irritation after his arrest in the Intelligence Office in Sanandaj”. He was hospitalized previously in Sanandaj resulting from his torture, HRAI reports.
Iran sentenced Latifi last week to death on charges of “support of anti-Islamic Republic combatant groups.” Two other social and political activists, Anvar Hossein Panahi and Arsalan Oliaei, were sentenced to death in Kurdistan Province earlier this month on similar charges.
Nemat Ahmadi and Saleh Nikanjat, both representing Latifi, said the charges include “creating fear and panic and taking away the freedom and security of the people through bombings and support for the PJAK [Party of Free Life of Kurdistan] group and taking actions to advance the group’s goals.”
The European Union said in a statement on 6 August that it was “greatly disturbed” by human rights violations against members of Iran’s civil society, particularly in Kurdistan Province.
Amir-Reza Ardalan, Jamalodin Rahmani, Rashed Abdollahi, Farshad Doosti-Pour, Sabah Nasri, Hedayat Qazali, Sohrab Karimi, Mohammad Saleh Abuman, Javad Alizadeh, Yasser Goli, Hana Abdi and Ronak Safarzadeh are other Kurdish university students who are currently being held in Iranian prisons.
Sources: Human Rights Activists in Iran website, Amir Kabir University student newsletter
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(Original article written in Persian.)