The authorities at Qarchak and Evin prisons have warned four Kurdish political prisoners with Turkish citizenship that their young children will be placed in state care if they do not agree to transfer custody to their families.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported that officials at the prisons summoned the prisoners — Rojda Saadoun, Safiye Tursu, Fesih Karatas and Mazlum Arli — and told them that they must sign documents transferring custody of their children to their families. Otherwise, the children will be removed from their care and handed over to the State Welfare Organisation.
The authorities cited prison regulations that permit children to remain with their mothers only until the age of two. The children, who are now three years old, have exceeded that limit.
Complicating matters, the prisoners’ families live in Turkey and have been unable to travel to Iran for visits since the arrests.
Saadoun and Tursu, along with their husbands, Arli and Karatas, and their two young children, were arrested on 24 July 2024 in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan Province, while travelling towards Armenia. They had previously lived as political refugees in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Following their arrest, they were first taken to the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Marivan, Kurdistan Province, later transferred to Sanandaj Prison, and eventually moved to Evin Prison in Tehran on 26 January 2025.
In June, Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Judge Abolghassem Salavati, sentenced all four to five years in prison on charges of “membership in opposition groups”.
Saadoun and Tursu are currently being held with their three-year-old children in the women’s ward of Qarchak Prison, while Arli and Karatas remain in Evin Prison.
Source: ANF News
