The Preliminary Board for Administrative Violations of Employees in Kurdistan Province has sentenced four members of the Kurdistan Teachers’ Trade Association to permanent dismissal, expulsion and exile, while another activist’s expulsion sentence was reduced on appeal, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.

Omid Shah-Mohammadi was sentenced to permanent dismissal from all government jobs, Hiva Ghoreishi and Kaveh Mohammadzadeh were dismissed from their posts, and Parviz Ehsani was sentenced to five years’ exile in schools in Qorveh, Kurdistan Province.

Separately, the expulsion sentence for Leyla Salimi, a teachers’ union activist from Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, was reduced to a two-month suspension by the Administrative Violations Appeals Board.

Salimi, who holds a PhD in Management, was initially expelled by the Preliminary Board this year.

The rulings followed a hearing by the Preliminary Board in September 2024, with the rulings issued on 7 December 2024.

Arrests and detentions

Shah-Mohammadi, Ehsani, Mohammadzadeh, and Ghoreishi were arrested on 15 June 2022 during a raid by security forces on their family homes in Divandarreh, Kurdistan Province, for their involvement in teachers’ sit-ins and union activities.

The activists were detained for 76 days in the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention centre in Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, before being provisionally released on bail of 15 billion rials (nearly 20,000 USD) each.

On 19 September 2022, Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj sentenced Shah-Mohammadi to one year of imprisonment and four years of suspended imprisonment, while Ehsani, Mohammadzadeh, and Ghoreishi were each sentenced to five years of suspended imprisonment for a four-year period.

Shah-Mohammadi began serving his one-year prison sentence on 8 April 2023 at Bijar Prison in Kurdistan Province, and was released a few months later under electronic surveillance with an ankle tag.