Two Kurdish women linger in jail without standing trial for nearly eight months. Varisha Moradi and Pakhshan Azizi remain in limbo in the women’s ward of Evin Prison.
Following are some details about the two Kurdish women activists, Varisha Moradi and Pakhshan Azizi.
Varisha Moradi has been in jail for more than 235 days. She is charged with Bagh-y for membership in a Kurdish opposition party. She was transferred from Ward 209 to the women’s ward of Evin Prison after the end of her interrogations on December 26, 2023.
Bagh-y or “armed insurgency” is a very heavy charge which can carry long prison terms and even the death sentence.
Varisha was abducted on August 1, 2023, in Kermanshah, on her way to Sanandaj in western Iran.
Ms. Moradi has been denied the right to her chosen lawyer and due procedure.
Varisha Moradi spent the first five months of incarceration in solitary confinement in the detention center of the Department of Intelligence in Sanandaj and Ward 209 in Evin Prison where she was viciously tortured to make false confessions against herself.
Varisha Moradi is a women’s rights activist and a member of the Free Women’s Society of Eastern Kurdistan (KJAR). In a September 26 statement addressed to the public, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, and international human rights organizations, KJAR said Varisha Moradi was in Kurdistan to carry out “political activities and to organize women.”
The second woman is Pakhshan Azizi who has been detained for more than 230 days.
She was arrested on August 4, 2023, in Shahrak-e Kharrazi, Tehran. Pakhshan Azizi is a journalist, a former political prisoner, and Social Work graduate. She endured over four months of extensive interrogation without legal counsel or communication with her family in the Intelligence Ministry’s Ward 209 at Evin Prison.
Pakhshan was relocated to the Women’s Ward at Evin on December 11, 2023.
This isn’t her first encounter with authorities; she was previously arrested on November 16, 2009, during a Kurdish student protest at Tehran University, which was staged against the execution of political prisoners in Kurdistan. Her prior arrest led to her release on bail on March 19, 2010.
