By FUAD HAQIQI

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region- Six Sunni Kurds from the city of Sanandaj (Sina in Kurdish) face imminent execution in Iran after summary trials without defence lawyers, one of the inmates said in a letter to Rudaw.

The prisoner, who wrote under the name ”Ahmed,” said he was also speaking on behalf of the five fellow Kurds. He said they had been convicted of ”enmity against God” and were on death row at the Qazil Hesar prison in the city of Karaj.

Ahmed said he spent more than four years being transferred from one jail to another, until finally being given the death sentence by a court in Tehran. He said he appeared at the court blindfolded, handcuffed and without a lawyer, together with the five others. The court took only 10 minutes to pass its verdict against all six.

Ahmed said that the charges were mainly directed at them because they are Kurdish and Sunni Muslim activists. He said it was part of a crackdown by Iran’s Shiite authorities against a growing Sunni Salafist movement.

Currently, 170 Kurdish religious activists are in Iranian prisons. Twenty-six of them have been sentenced to death.

In a telephone call with Rudaw, made under secrecy from prison, Ahmed denied any links to the Salafist movement. He told Rudaw, “I only visited the mosque for worshiping. I have tried to advise the people to distance themselves from superstitions. That is it.”

However, he did not deny that he has been friends with members of the Maktabi Quran Group, a Salafist movement in Iranian Kurdistan. The Salafists have recently gained popularity in Iranian Kurdistan.

In 2010 and 2011, the Salafists carried out several car bombings in Sina. This gave Iranian authorities the pretext to crush the movement. However, the government only chases after those Salafists who break links with the government.

In the meantime, the Iranian government has started pressuring moderate Sunni activists. Recently, a number of preachers and religious activists were punished.

According to a report by the Maktabi Quran Group, over the past year 25 school teachers in the Kurdish areas have been forced to quit teaching by Iranian authorities, on the pretext they had ties with the Maktabi Quran Group.

Hassan Amini, a Sharia judge in Sina recently sent a letter to the Iranian president, parliament speaker, and head of the Iranian judiciary, asking them to free the Sunni religious activists.

RUDAW