Execution of Kurdish Political Prisoner Sherko Moarefi
Sherko Moarefi, a Kurdish political activist from Baneh, was tortured, denied medical care, and executed in secret in 2013 after being accused of membership in the Komala Party.
10/2/20251 min read
Sherko Moarefi, born in 1980 in Baneh, Kurdistan Province, was arrested in July 2008 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. From the moment of his arrest, he was subjected to brutal treatment. He spent weeks in a military detention centre in Saqqez, where he was tortured physically and mentally, and later endured two more months of severe abuse in the Ministry of Intelligence detention centre in Sanandaj.
Moarefi later described his trial as unfair. After months of torture and forced confessions, he was charged with “enmity against God” (moharebeh) through alleged membership in the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan. He was sentenced to death at Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court in Saqqez. He was denied a lawyer during the trial and only informed he could obtain one for the appeal after his death sentence was already issued. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict.
During his years in prison, Sherko Moarefi was denied medical care despite serious stomach ulcer problems. He was also placed in solitary confinement as punishment for receiving a poetry book by the Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas. On 3 November 2013, prison guards suddenly moved him to solitary confinement. The next morning, without informing his family or lawyer, he was executed in Saqqez Prison. His body was buried the same day in Baneh under heavy security.
His execution stands as another example of Iran’s systematic use of torture, unfair trials, and executions to silence Kurdish activists and political prisoners.