The Islamic Republic of Iran on 29 December sentenced a female Kurdish writer, Mozhgan Kavousi, to five years imprisonment over “disrupting national security” charges, reported Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
The Kurdish writer was arrested at her hometown Nowshahr on 22 September and after an initial interrogation taken to pre-trial detention at Tonekabon Prison.
Kavousi’s trail in the Iranian Branch One of the Islamic Revolution Court began on 20 December. She was tried over a series of charges, including, “spreading corruption on earth” (efsad-e fel arz), “insulting the Supreme Leader”, and “spreading lies”, among other charges. Such charges can carry the death penalty in Iran.
The court informed Kavousi’s lawyers on 29 December that she had been sentenced to five years and two months in jail.
However, this was not the writer’s first arrest. Kavousi was previously arrested in January 2022, after serving 21 months of a three-year prison sentence.
During her arrest, Kavousi twice underwent a hunger strike to protest prison conditions.
Kavousi is the translator of a book, ‘The Anfal and the History of Timur: The Only Surviving Mass Graves of Women and Children Killed During the Anfal’, first written in Persian by Iraqi Kurdish writer Aref Qurbai, on Saddam Al-Hussain’s Genocide of Kurds.