Calls to cancel death sentence against Iranian Kurdish activist

ARBIL /Iraqi News A former Iraqi Kurdistan minister appealed to Spiritual Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to cancel the death sentence handed down against Iranian Kurdish activist Zaynab Jalalian and release her. “In the name of all Iraqi Kurdistan legislators and intellectuals and human rights advocates, we appeal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to stop the death sentence against Jalalian and release her,” Falak al-Din Kaka Yi, a former Iraqi Kurdistan minister of culture and leading member of Massoud Barazani’s Kurdistan Democratic Republic (KDP), said in a release received by Iraqi News. Yi also called for canceling all other death sentences handed down by Iranian courts against political activists. Jalalian, 27, had issued a call last year to human rights organizations. An Iranian Kurdish political activist had been condemned to death in a trial that took only a few minutes The Iranian Revolutionary Court in Kermanshah sentenced another Kurdish activist, a twenty-seven year old Ms. Jalalian to death. She was tried before the Court without a legal representation and was given death sentence for being an “Enemy of God.” After her sentence was read to her, When asked the Court if she could say good-bye to her mother. Her appeal was denied and she was not allowed to see her mother. Since her arrest in May 2008, Ms. Jalalian had been under constant physical-psychological torture and humiliation. AmR (S) 2