Ehsan Fatahian was an Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

ian Kurdish

Kurdish people

The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...

 activist, who was executed on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, in Sanandaj

Sanandaj

Sanandaj , also Romanized as Senneh and Sinneh) is a city in and the capital of Kurdistan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 311,446, in 81,380 families....

 Central Prison, after being sentenced to death

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

 by the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic, for allegedly being a member of the armed wing of Komalah

Komalah

Komala or Komalah is a Kurdish political party in Iran . The word Komele in Kurdish is derived from Komel and means "association".-Political background:...

. He was 28 years old.

Fatahian was born in the city of Kermanshah

Kermanshah

Kermanshah is a city in and the capital of Kermanshah Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 784,602, in 198,117 families.The overwhelming majority of Kermanshahi people are Shi'a Muslims...

. He was arrested on July 20, 2008, in the Kurdish city of Kamyiaran by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Accused of helping the Kurdish opposition group Komeleh and participating in "propaganda activities against the regime," he was originally sentenced to ten years in prison, but his sentence was later changed to death by hanging.

Human rights organizations denounced Fatahian's execution. Omar Memarian, a Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

 consultant, said: “The execution today is very alarming. We are faced with a new wave of violence by the government which is only comparable to the early days after the revolution.”

Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations had called for a halt on Fatahian's execution. More than 10,000 people signed an online petition in an effort to stop the execution. Prisoners at Sanandaj Prison, including Habibollah Latifi

Habibollah Latifi

Habibollah Latifi is a Kurdish Iranian law student at Azad University and a Kurdish activist who has been charged with Moharebeh and sentenced to death by an Islamic Revolutionary Court in Iran...

, Adnan Hassanpour

Adnan Hassanpour

Adnan Hassanpour is an Iranian-Kurdish journalist who was sentenced to death in Iran in 2007 and reversed a year later. He is currently being re-tried on the capital charges of espionage and working with outlawed parties....

, Anward Hossein Panahi, Arsalan Evliyayi, Jabril Khoroyi, Ronak Safazadeh

Ronak Safazadeh

Ronak Safazadeh, age 21, is an Iranian women's rights activist, and a member of the Azarmehr Association of Kurdish Women. She campaigned for women's rights by collecting signatures for the One Million Signature Campaign, an effort to remove discrimination against women from the Iranian legal code...

 and Fatemeh Goftari participated in a hunger strike

Hunger strike

A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...

 to support Fatahian. Prisoners in Evin and Rajaishahr prisons, including Farzad Kamangar

Farzad Kamangar

Farzad Kamangar was a 32-year-old Iranian Kurdish teacher, poet, journalist, human rights activist and social worker from the city of Kamyaran, Iran who was executed on May 9, 2010. - The Accusations and the Courts :Kamangar was prosecuted on charges of mohareb "enmity towards God"...

, Ali Heydariyan

Ali Heydariyan

Ali Heydariyan is an Iranian Kurdish activist, who has been sentenced to death by an Islamic Revolutionary Court, for allegedly being a member of the armed group, the Kurdistan Workers Party ....

 and Farhad Vakili

Farhad Vakili

Farhad Vakili is an Iranian Kurdish activist, who has been sentenced to death by an Islamic Revolutionary Court, for allegedly being a member of the armed group, the Kurdistan Workers Party ....

, also participated in this hunger strike.

Protests following Fatahnian's execution in Azadi Square in Sanandaj resulted in many protesters being wounded and arrested. Amer Goli, a student, and Ako Kurdnasab

Ako Kurdnasab

Ako Kurdnasab is a Kurdish journalist for the weekly Kurdish journal Krafto. Krafto , which is based in Sanandaj, the capital of the Kurdistan province of Iran, was closed by the authorities last year....

, a journalist, were arrested following these protests.

In a letter from Sanandaj prison, Fatahian wrote:

I never feared death. Even now, as I feel its odd and honest presence next to me, I still want to smell its aroma and rediscover it; Death, who has been the most ancient companion of this land. I don’t want to talk about death; I want to question the reasons behind it. Today, when punishment is the answer for those who seek freedom and justice, how can one fear his fate?...




Let me put it this way: after being arrested on July 20th, 2008, in Kamyaran, I was taken to the Intelligence Ministry’s local office. A few hours later, as I was blindfolded and chained and could not see or move, a person who introduced himself as the deputy prosecutor began questioning me. His questions were irrelevant and filled with made up accusations (let me remind you that it is strictly against the law to interrogate people in places other than courts and tribunals). This was the first of many interrogation sessions I had to face. The same night, I was taken to the Intelligence Ministry’s provincial headquarters in Sanandaj, where I had to attend the real party: a dirty cell with a disgusting washroom. The blankets had not been washed for years. This was the beginning of three months of going up and down the hall from my cell to the interrogation room, always being beaten along the way. The honorable interrogators were so keen to get a promotion or make a bit more money that they accused me of all kinds of bizarre things, even though they knew of the falsehood of their accusation. They used every means in their power to prove that I had taken part in armed operations. In the end they could only prove that I had been a member of Komeleh and had taken part in propaganda activities against the regime. The 10 year sentence handed by the initial court is good proof that I only had one charge. The 1st branch of the Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj sentenced me to 10 years in prison, to be served in Ramhormoz Prison outside Kordestan. The political and administrative establishment in Iran has always been in favor of centralized policies, but, apparently, in my case, they had decided to reverse course! Recently provincial appeals courts have become the judicial authority to rule in cases related to political prisoners, even in capital punishment cases. Capital punishment cases were the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. So, the Kamayaran prosecutor objected the initial ruling, and, surprisingly, against Iranian law, the 4th branch of the Kordestan Appeals Court changed the 10 year sentence to a death sentence. According to Article 258 of Iranian Criminal law, appeals courts can only issue a heavier sentence when the initial sentence is lighter than the minimum punishment required by law. The indictment presented by the prosecutor stated the charge as Moharebeh

Moharebeh

Moharebeh is the title of a crime in Islamic law. Mohareb refers to the perpetrator of the crime. Moharebeh has been translated in English language media sources variously as "waging war against God," "war against God and the state," "enmity against God." Mohareb has been translated by English...

(enmity against God). The minimum punishment required by law in similar cases is 1 year in prison. Now, be the judge yourself and compare the 10 year prison sentence (served in exile) with the minimum required to see how illegal, unlawful and political the death sentence is.




Let me add that, shortly before my sentence was changed to the death sentence, I was taken from Sanandaj prison to the Intelligence Ministry’s detention center, where I was asked to make a false confession on camera, show remorse for the actions I had not committed and reject my beliefs. I did not give in to their illegitimate demands, so I was told that my prison sentence would be changed to the death sentence. They were fast to keep their promise and prove to me how courts always concede to the demands of intelligence and non-judicial authorities. How can one criticize the courts then?




All judges take an oath to remain impartial at all times and in all cases, to rule according to the law and nothing but the law. How many of the judges of this country can say that they have not broken their oath and have remained fair and impartial? In my opinion the number is countable with the fingers on my hand. When the entire justice system in Iran orders arrests, trials, imprisonments and death sentences with the simple hand gesture of an uneducated interrogator, what is to be expected from a few minor judges in a province that has always been discriminated against? Yes, in my view, it is the foundation of the house which is in ruins.




Last time I met in prison with the prosecutor who had issued the initial indictment, he admitted that the ruling was illegal. Yet, for the second time, it has been ruled that my execution should be carried out. It goes without saying that the insistence to carry out the execution at any cost is a result of pressures exercised by political and intelligence groups outside the Judiciary. People who are part of these groups look at the question of life and death of a prisoner only based on their own political and financial interests. They cannot see anything but their own illegitimate objectives, even when it is the question of a person’s right to life - the most basic of all human rights. How pointless is it to expect them to respect international treaties when they don’t even respect their own laws?




Last word: if the rulers and oppressors think that, with my death, the Kurdish question will go away, they are wrong. My death and the deaths of thousands of others like me will not cure the pain; they will only add to the flames of this fire. There is no doubt that every death is the beginning of a new life.




Ehsan Fattahian,


Sanandaj Central Prison"