 Professional Background
Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand is a Kurdish journalist, activist, and editor of the banned weekly Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan (Kurdistan People’s Message), who was sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of “acting against national security.”
Current Status
At a closed trial on June 22, 2008, Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand was sentenced to 11 years in prison by the Tehran Revolutionary Court on charges of “acting against national security” for forming the Tehran-based Kurdish Human Rights Organization (RMMK). He is suffering from a number of medical conditions, including high blood pressure and kidney disease, and his health has reportedly deteriorated as a result of ill-treatment in Evin prison, where he is currently detained. On May 19, 2008, Kabudvand reportedly suffered a stroke in prison and has been denied access to adequate medical care. On October 23, 2008 the Tehran Appeal Court upheld his sentence.
Case History
Kabudvand was arrested on July 1, 2007 at his place of work in Tehran by plain-clothes security officers. Following his arrest, he was initially taken to his house in Tehran, where security officers confiscated three computers, books, photographs and personal documents before taking him away to the Intelligence Ministry’s Section 209 of Evin Prison. He spent the first five months in solitary confinement, and his family was unable to raise the bail that could have enabled him to be freed pending trial, which began on May 25, 2008.
This is not the first time Kabudvand has been targeted by the authorities for his critical writings and activism. The weekly newspaper that he edited, Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan, published in Kurdish and Farsi, was banned on June 27, 2004, after only 13 issues, for “disseminating separatist ideas and publishing false reports.” On August 18, 2005, a Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj convicted Kabudvand of “disseminating tribal issues and publishing provocative articles” and “spreading lies with the intention of upsetting public opinion,” and handed him a suspended prison sentence of 18 months as well as a five-year ban on working as a journalist. Kabudvand has reportedly written two books on democracy and a third on the women’s movement in Iran, which were not given publishing licences. |
| |
|
 |
Send a Letter of Appeal
PEN is deeply concerned about an apparent pattern of repression against journalists and human rights activists in Iranian Kurdistan, which has been ongoing since unrest broke out there in July 2005, and was violently suppressed by Iranian authorities.
Please write to Iranian authorities, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory, and on humanitarian grounds.
Please send copies of any replies you may receive from the authorities to PEN American Center.
>> Sample appeal letter |
| |
|
PEN Press Releases
November 8, 2008: Day of the Imprisoned Writer
Writers and Journalists Killed Since Day of Imprisoned Writer: 15 November 2007
|
|
