Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand

Kurdish journalist Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand received an 11-year prison sentence on 22 June 2008 on charges of "acting against national security" for his Kurdish rights activism. International PEN remains seriously concerned for his health, following reports that he suffered a stroke on 19 May 2008 and was denied access to adequate medical care. PEN is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand in accordance with Article 19 of the United Nations International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a signatory. We seek assurances of his well being, guarantees that his basic rights are being respected and that he is given full access to all necessary medical care as a matter of urgency.

According to PEN's information, Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, editor of the banned weekly Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan, was arrested on 1 July 2007 at his place of work in Tehran by plain-clothed security officers. Following his arrest, Kabudvand 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, where he is said to have been ill-treated. He spent the first five months of his detention in solitary confinement. His family has been unable to raise the bail that could have enabled him to be freed pending trial. Kabudvand's trial began on 25 May 2008, and he was sentenced at a closed trial on 22 June 2008 to eleven years in prison by the Tehran Revolutionary Court for forming a human rights organisation in Iran's Kurdish region.

Amnesty International gives the following background:

‘Chair of the Kurdish Human Rights Organization (RMMK) based in Tehran, Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, is also the editor of Payam-e Mardom-e Kurdestan (Kurdistan People's Message) a weekly published in Kurdish and Persian, which was banned on 27 June 2004 after only 13 issues for ‘disseminating separatist ideas and publishing false reports'. Convicted of ‘disseminating tribal issues and publishing provocative articles' and ‘spreading lies with the intention of upsetting public opinion' by a Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj, western Iran, Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand received on 18 August 2005 a suspended prison sentence of 18 months, and a five-year ban on working as a journalist. His conviction was reportedly upheld on appeal, but the suspended prison sentence was increased to one year's actual imprisonment. In September 2006 he was summoned to begin his prison sentence, but remained free pending an appeal against his conviction to the Supreme Court.'

Kabudvand has reportedly written two books on democracy and a third on the women's movement in Iran, which were not given publishing licences.

(Courtesy International PEN)