Zeynab Jalaliyan

Who is Zeynab Jalaliyan?

Zeynab Jalalian, born 1982 in Maku, is an Iranian Kurdish, often wrongly described as a political activist. She has been convicted a mohareb and sentenced to death by an Islamic Revolutionary Court for allegedly being a member of the Kurdish militant group PJAK, which she denies.

When Jalalian was ten years old, she ran away from home because her parents would not allow her to go to school. According to her family, she was arrested in July 2007 in the Kurdish city of Kermanshah. She was then transferred to the detention center of the Intelligence Ministry.

Revolution court in Kermanshah conducted a brief trial, without due diligence and proper legal representation, lasting only a few minutes. Based on her alleged membership of a Kurdistan political party, she was accused of fighting God and was given the death penalty. She was ill, due to prison conditions and torture. She did not have any lawyer to defend her. Court told her: “You are a God's enemy and you have to be hanged very soon”. Her death sentence was confirmed by the Iranian Supreme Court in November 2009.

On June 28, 2010, her family stated that in her last phone call, "which was a month ago, Zeynab has mentioned that she is held in Evin Prison”. Since that time, her family or her lawyers had not been able to receive any further information, the authorities responding that her file had been lost.

In an interview in International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran published on July 1, 2010, Iranian lawyer Khalil Bahramian talks about him being refused to visit Ms Jalalian in prison.