Kurdish member of Iran’s Guards sentenced to death on espionage charges

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A rights group on Thursday confirmed an Iranian Kurdish (Rojhilati) member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was handed a capital punishment sentence in August on charges of association with opposition groups to Tehran.

Arsalan Khodkam, nearly forty days ago, was “sentenced to death by the Military Prosecutor Office’s 23rd branch on charges of espionage and cooperation with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan [PDKI],” according to a report by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, an entity that logs human rights violations involving Kurds in Iran.

The report explains that Khodkam, 50, was from the Kurdistan Province’s city of Mahabad and was a Peshmerga in the PDKI in his youth. But, in the early nineties, he turned himself in and shortly after, joined the ranks of the IRGC.

Mahabad security forces arrested him in March and have since held him in Urmia Central Prison.

On Aug. 20, the Second Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia condemned Mohyeddin Ebrahimi to death on charges of membership in the PDKI.

In late-2017, Ebrahimi was shot at a checkpoint in Oshnavieh in Iran while working as a Kulbar—a Kurdish term for individuals who smuggle small amounts of goods between the Iran-Kurdistan Region border.

The Islamic Regime is notorious for the number of executions per capita it carries out every year. Recent cases that garnered international attention were that of Ramin Hossein Panahi and two cousins, Loghman and Zanyar Moradi, who were executed on Sep. 8. In total, six Kurdish political prisoners were killed since then.

On the same day at the executions, Iran carried out a cross-border missile attack on the headquarters of two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in the Kurdistan Region’s town of Koya, killing 15 people and injuring 42 others.

Editing by Nadia Riva