Bultan News, a media outlet affiliated with the IRGC, in an article published a few hours ago that the execution of Haydar Ghorbani, a Kurdish political prisoner, was imminent.
The Bultan News article is full of misinformation. The false information begins in its subtitle where it announces the wrong date for when the death sentence of Haydar Ghorbani by Branch 27 of the Supreme Court in Qom, was issued. IRGC’s propaganda branch, introduces Haydar Ghorbani as a “terrorist” and the campaigns launched by Iranian users on social media and citizens in different parts of Kurdistan as “inducement by counter-revolutionary groups to save a terrorist from the gallows.”
Saleh Nikbakht, Haydar’s attorney during appeal process, described the campaigns as “spontaneous reactions”, in an interview with Radio Neda today, August 29, 2021.
In this article full of contradictions and lies, the IRGC media, initially refers to the victims of the case as “martyred Basijis of Kurdistan”, in order to narrate them as “ordinary residents” of Kamyaran, a few lines later.
Haydar Ghorbani lost his father, Ali Ghorbani, in 1980, when he was 7 years old. Bultan News brings Hayder’s father into the case. Haydar, who had previously been described as a “terrorist”, is called a “smuggler”. The date of his father’s death is also mentioned incorrectly: “He was a prominent smuggler in the Kamyaran region before his arrest, and his father was killed in a clash with (revolutionary) fighters after 1981.” Two days ago, on Friday, August 27, 2021, a large number of citizens, including businessmen, farmers, workers, clerics, and merchants, and, as Mr. Nikbakht, points out in the interview, signed a statement in the form of a long petition. The letter begins with the following sentences: “We, the signatories of this statement, as merchants and businessmen of Kamyaran, know Mr. Haydar Ghorbani closely. The 49-year-old, married with 2 kids and one of the businessmen in Kamyaran, in addition to being convicted in criminal court branch 1 of the province, has been sentenced to death in the Islamic Revolutionary Court for “Baghy”*. We know very well that he has never had any affiliation or supported any armed groups opposed to the Islamic Republic.”
Nothing is true in the Bultan News narrative, even the dates mentioned are often incorrect. Shaho Karimian, Sediq Amini and Jabbar Ebrahimi, three well-known members of the IRGC and Basij in the region, were killed on September 30, 2016, according to the documents collected in this article. Bultan News reports the date of Siddiq Amini and Jabbar Ebrahimi murder as 26 September and Shaho Karimian’s as 10 October. Dates that do not correspond to the documents or even to the PressTV’s narrative that was made in March 2019 after months of torture and solitary confinement of Haydar Ghorbani to pave the way for the issuance of his death sentence.
In its article, Bultan News claims that Haydar Ghorbani during trial process “has had the right to a lawyer and after several sessions of a fair trial and the right to a defense” was sentenced to death.
Haydar Ghorbani faces two sentences. Branch 1 of the Sanandaj Criminal Court sentenced him to a total of 90 years in prison for “assisting in premeditated murder and collaborating with an opposition party,” and Branch 1 of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court sentenced him to death for “Baghy.” According to a media report published last year, Mr. Javanmardi, who had been representing Haydar Ghorbani until his appeal, was not allowed access to his client’s case until the day of the trial, according to which he was charged with “Baghy”: “How can I defend my client when I have no information about the details of the case?” Judge Saeedi answers the lawyer’s question: “You can read the 300-page file in half an hour and write your defense.” Javanmardi declined. Saleh Nikbakht, Hyidar Ghorbani’s current lawyer, also considers the “Baghy” charge in this case unproven and contrary to what the statute stipulated regarding this charge. There is no evidence in Haydar Ghorbani’s case that can justify the three main conditions of the “Baghy” charge:
– There is no evidence of his membership in an armed and dissident group,
– Haydar Ghorbani was never armed and no weapons were found in his house or anywhere else.
– Ghorbani did not use a weapon anywhere in the case.
“The death sentence of this terrorist will be carried out soon and justice will be free from the nuisance of the media,” Bultan News wrote in the last sentence of its article, with a special taste and impatience that reminds the reader of the murderers and barbarism of the religious brothers of the IRGC in ISIS, the Taliban and Boko Haram.
This kind of justice needs silence.
Translation of this post by Sahar.
*: Baghy is one of the most serious crimes in the Sharia law which requires the person to be a member of an armed group opposing the Islamic government, using weapons to commit a crime revolting against the government. More about Baghy here.
