This is happening:
According to news received from Habbibolah Latifi’s lawyer Mr. Nikbakht, Mr. Latifi is set to be executed on Sunday December 26th 2010 in Sanandaj Prison, in Iran.
Habibollah Latifi is a 29 years old Kurdish activist who was majoring in engineering in Eylam University when he was arrested on October 23rd 2007 in the city of Sanandaj. Mr. Latifi was charged with “endangering state security” and was brutally tortured in order to force a confession from him. Eight months after his arrest he was sentenced to death by the “Revolutionary Court” in the city of Sanandaj and the death sentence was upheld by the “Court of Appeal” in Sanandaj in February of 2009.
I just received word of this from my Kurdish friends in Nashville. (Nashville is home to one of the largest Kurdish refugee and immigrant communities in the world.)
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is on full alert, noting that Latifi's execution is meant to create a chilling effect and silence even the slightest political dissent in the Islamist state of Iran.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran called for an immediate halt to this unfair sentence, and for the case to be reviewed by a judge independent of security forces. The Campaign believes this ruling must be challenged to bring attention to the ever-increasing influence of intelligence-security forces over the Iranian Judiciary and in determining outcomes of trials. The Campaign believes these intelligence-security forces are ultimately pushing towards large scale political executions and any silence in the face of such politically-motivated executions could lead to devastating results in the condition of Iranian political prisoners.
In a 2008 report, Amnesty International sounded an alert regarding human rights abuses against the Kurdish minority community. Little progress has been made in addressing these issues over the past two years.
Latifi is in imminent danger of execution, and human rights groups are speaking out in the Middle East and around the world. The group Change for Equality reports:
Mr. Latifi was held four months in solitary confinement while subjected to severe torture by the Ministry of Intelligence interrogators. He was tried on the charges of “acting against national security and the regime” on June 30, 2008 in a process that lasted only a few minutes, without the presence of his family, in branch 1 of the Sanandaj (the capital of the Kurdistan province) Revolutionary Court and sentenced to death. This death sentence was upheld by the “Court of Appeal” in Sanandaj on February of 2009.
There has been scant media coverage of this impending execution in the American press, though the Kurdish-American community is buzzing with concerns about Latifi's case and attempting to draw attention to this abuse of power by the Iranian government.
Please join me in standing up against abuses of power by the Iranian government. Sign the Amnesty International petition.
Call the US State Department's Iran office at 202-647-2520.
(Edited. An earlier version of this diary made a reference to Glenn Greenwald at the top. I'll add it at the bottom instead. Greenwald would do well to draw attention to the parallels between this case and the pending case of Bradley Manning.)