Sunni prisoner awaiting execution transferred to hospital

HRANA News Agency – Barzan Nasrollah Zadeh, a Sunni prisoner of conscience awaiting execution in Iran’s Rajai Shahr prison, was transferred to hospital yesterday following a deterioration in his condition.

According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), despite doctors saying that Barzan was in urgent need of surgery, he was transferred for an unknown reason back to Rajai Shahr prison within a few hours, without receiving medical treatment.

The transfer to hospital followed a deterioration in his condition, after he endured four years of extreme abdominal pain with prison officials refusing to provide him with adequate medical treatment.

Barzan Nasrollah Zadeh has been suffering from health problems since his arrest on 29 May 2010. He was shot in the abdomen by plain-clothed officers from the Ministry of Intelligence who arrested him as he walked home from school in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province of Iran. He was only 17 years old at the time.

Despite his severe injuries, he was admitted to the local hospital for approximately one hour, before being transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence Detention Center in Sanandaj. He lost his spleen due to the lack of medical care he received.

He was subjected to torture whilst held at the Ministry of Intelligence Detention Center in Sanandaj, and was also psychologically tortured by being forced to watch other detainees being tortured by Intelligence officers.

Barzan Nasrollah Zadeh was then filmed by interrogators who forced him to make a false ‘confession’ that he had ‘contact with Salafi groups’.

Following the ‘confession’, he was sentenced to death in Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, along with two other Sunni men, after being convicted of ‘Moharebeh (enmity against God) through the support of Salafi groups’.