HRANA News Agency – Kamal Sharifi, journalist and political activist in Minab prison is in his eighth year of imprisonment while being deprived of furlough during all these years, and being able to visit his family just for once.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Kamal Sharifi, journalist and political activist, born in October 1972, is spending his 30-year-imprisonment sentence in exile, in Minab prison, while he has been able to visit his parents just once and after a long hunger strike.
One of his relatives, in an interview with HRANA said that “Kamal suffered leg pain and his foot tendons found a problem since the torture of arrest so that he is just be able to walk and is not able to run or exercise in the morning in prison and due to lack of treatment, the problem is getting worse. He referred to the prison clinic repeatedly, but they only give a few simple models of pain reliever. Prison officials do not send him to out of prison to diagnose and treat the problem.”
He also added: “Kamal was stroked while sleeping in 2012. He did not have the phone permission even. He was banned to call in Saghez prison for one year. In the early of being in Minab prison, an agent watched him out not to call. But after a few months due to lack of prison facilities, they could no control him longer in this way, his father dreams of seeing Kamal once again before his death. He has not seen any member of his family except his mother just for one time, in the eight years.”
The source said at the end: “Once he goes to the prosecutor of prison and asks him about the furlough, but the prosecutor says to him according to the verdict, ‘furlough does not belong to you.’”
Kamal Sharifi was arrested in 1998 in the city of Saghez, and in Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court, presided by Judge Shayegh, was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment.
In 2008, he went on a long-term hunger strike in prison to protest his condition in Minab prison. After the hunger strike Kamal Sharifi was experiencing gastrointestinal problems and prison infirmary did nothing for his treatment.
Kamal Sharifi, who is held in Minab prison along with criminal prisoners, was arrested in 1989 and 1990 on several occasions with charges of supporting and working for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and eventually in the Revolutionary Court, in Saghez, was sentenced to one year of imprisonment and 40 lashes.