Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported that Kurdish political prisoner Zeynab Jalalian has been transferred to a prison in the province of Kerman in the southeast of the country.

Ali Jalalian, Zeynab’s father, has received a text message from the judiciary regarding the transfer of his daughter’s case to the Branch 1 of the Kerman Criminal Court.”, a family member of the political prisoner told KHRN about the latest situation of Zeynab. 

According to this family member, based on the above-mentioned phone call and text message, Zeynab Jalalian may have possibly been transferred to Kerman Prison, although there is no legal and justifiable reason for this transfer.

38-year-old Kurd Zeynab Jalalian was last held in the Qarchak detention centre in Varamin, south of the Iranian capital Tehran. She had been transferred there from Xoy prison at the end of April without giving reasons. During this odyssey, which continued via detention centres in Urmia, Kermanshah and the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, Jalalian fell ill with Covid-19. On 20 June, she went on a hunger strike to demand her return to Xoy. There is no information about her current health condition. Her relatives have not yet been able to visit her, as Kerman is almost 1,800 kilometres away from where they live.

Zeynab Jalalian is seriously ill. Among other things she suffers from severe infections and conjunctival growths. Although she is in danger of losing her sight, the Iranian authorities have for years refused to allow her to see specialists or receive treatment outside of prison. Instead, she is repeatedly pressured to make "confessions" on television in order to be given the treatment she needs. In May it also became known that another case against Jalalian is pending in Tehran. It is still unclear, however, why she is under investigation.

Zeynab Jalalian, born in 1982 in Maku, was arrested in summer 2008 in Kermanshah and was sentenced to death in January 2009 for alleged membership of the "Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan" (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê - PJAK). The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in November 2011.