Five Kurdish citizens have been on a hunger strike for six days in the Central Prison of Ilam, a Kurdish province in the western part of Iran known as Rojhilat.
The hunger strike, which began on 23 July according to Iran Human Rights Monitor, is a demonstration of their discontent with what they perceive as illegal detention and the lack of attention from the city’s prosecutor regarding their case.
The detainees, Mehrdad Qaisarbaigi, Ayoub Geravand, Younes Geravand, Navid Mohammad Nejad, and Shahriar Faryadian, were initially taken into custody by the Department of Intelligence in Ilam and later transferred to the Central Prison after spending a week under the intelligence agency’s custody.
During their detention, the detainees allege that they were subjected to both physical and psychological torture to extract forced confessions from them.
Despite numerous appeals from the detainees’ families, the city’s prosecutor has yet to address their case, leading to frustration and discontent among the prisoners. As a result, the five citizens, who have been incarcerated since their arrest on 11 June, decided to embark on a hunger strike as a form of protest against the slow progress in handling their situation.
The arrested individuals all hail from the city of Sarableh in Ilam.
Mehrdad Qaisarbaigi and Ayoub Geravand were also arrested during nationwide Jin, Jiyan, Azadî protests in Sarableh back in November 2022.