Ashkan Fahim, a Kurdish writer and cultural activist from Mahabad, West Azerbaijan Province, who has been held in Mahabad Prison since October 2023, is being denied medical treatment despite suffering from multiple health problems, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.
Fahim suffers from a heart condition, chronic headaches, and skin allergies. Despite these serious health issues, the Ministry of Intelligence has blocked his access to medical care and medical furlough.
KHRN said that Fahim was transferred in the summer of 2024 to the prison’s work section with the approval of the prison’s classification council and was granted several days of furlough each week for around three months.
However, since October 2024, he has been returned to the main prison ward for unknown reasons.
For nearly 11 months, despite suffering from several health conditions – including a skin disease he developed in prison, as well as a worsening of his pre-existing illness and chronic headaches – he has been deprived of access to medical treatment and medical furlough.
Fahim, along with two other men from Mahabad and Marivan, was arrested on 15 September 2023 after dozens of agents from the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) raided his home.
Security forces violently detained him, breaking doors and windows during the raid and causing him to bleed after striking him with a rifle butt.
He was subjected to severe torture for a month in the IRGC Intelligence Organisation’s detention centre at Al-Mahdi Base in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province, and was subsequently transferred to Mahabad Prison on 18 October 2023.
In December 2023, Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Mahabad, presided over by Judge Dousti, sentenced Fahim to three years and nine months imprisonment and two years of exile on charges of “assembly and collusion” through membership of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK).
Following his request to accept the verdict, the sentence was converted to 35 months of imprisonment and two years of exile.
Source: ANF News
