Sunni prisoner Barzan Nasrollah Zadeh transferred to hospital

HRANA News Agency – A Sunni prisoner awaiting execution in Iran was rushed to hospital in an emergency transfer on Saturday, before being sent back to prison without receiving adequate medical treatment. The move comes just a month after he was transferred to hospital in similar circumstances in September 2014.

According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Sunni prisoner of conscience Barzan Nasrollah Zadeh, who has endured four years of extreme abdominal pain without receiving adequate medical care, was transferred to the Imam Khomeini hospital in Karaj on Saturday 18 October 2014.

Despite doctors previously saying that he is in urgent need of surgery, Barzan was not provided with adequate medical treatment by staff at the Imam Khomeini hospital, and instead was only prescribed painkillers. He was then sent back to Rajai Shahr prison.

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’.