Sahar Kazemi, a Kurdish civil activist, was sentenced to five years in prison by the Sanandaj Court.
Those close to Ms. Kazemi confirmed the news and stressed that she was sentenced because of her activities in the field of civil and environmental issues.
After the sentence was issued by the court in Sanandaj, Sahar Kazemi complained about the ruling and called for an appeal. Ms. Kazemi’s case has been referred to the Appeals Court.
Simultaneous with the five years of imprisonment sentence for civil activist Sahar Kazemi, her husband, Madeh Fat’hi, was released after three months in prison with a bail of 100 million tomans.
Sahar Kazemi, a female environmental and civil activist and sports coach from Sanandaj, was detained on August 9, 2018, by the Ministry of Intelligence forces at her home. Intelligence Department agents ransacked her house. Over the past two years, Sahar Kazemi had been summoned several times to the Intelligence Department of Sanandaj where she was interrogated.
Sahar Kazemi was temporarily released on November 24, 2018, but was arrested again on Sunday, December 2, 2018, after going to the Justice Department of Sanandaj.
Sahar Kazemi’s husband, Madeh Fat’hi, was arrested last autumn and held for three months in a solitary cell in the detention center of the Department of Intelligence of Sananda
A number of environmental activists have been arrested since February 2018, on the charge of espionage.
13 environmental activists have been held in detention for months. Houman Jowkar, general manager of the Asiatic Cheetah Conservation Project in Iran; Taher Ghadirian, young scientist and Human Resource Coordinator at UNESCO; Sam Rajabi, environmental expert; Amirhossein Khaleghi and Niloufar Bayani, wildlife experts; Sepideh Kashani, Houman Jowkar’s wife and former activities adviser to the United Nations Environment Programme; and Morad Tahbaz all work with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation.
