Persian → English transcript

Greetings and respect to my dear compatriots and my Kurdish- speaking fellow

people with honor. I am Naser Bakrzadeh and you are hearing my voice from Urmia

Central Prison. This might be my last voice. I am the son of Mullah Mansour,

I am twenty- six years old, and I have two younger sisters.

And at the age of twenty- three,

when I was at the height of my dreams and desire to live, I was arrested.

From the first day of my arrest until today

my parents have been dying and coming back to life every day.

And the sorrow of distance and separation

has weighed heavily on their shoulders.

In the prime of their youth they have grown old and broken. There was a time when

they were happy and they had

the wish to see their only son in a groom’s suit. A few days before my

arrest we were supposed to go to propose marriage.

And now it has been four years that this

girl has been waiting for me. Even right now, a few hours after I heard the news

that my sentence was confirmed, I do not know how to call her and tell her that my

sentence has been confirmed and I am going to be executed.

After I finished my school education,

based on my father’s decision and my interest I myself started studying at the

Salahuddin Ayoubi religious school in Piranshahr. After two years of studying,

given the conditions that in our family we

had I decided to take a burden off my

father's shoulders. And I opened a cellphone store in Urmia.

I I was arrested on the twelfth of Dey, 1402.

and I was kept for three months in the IRGC Intelligence solitary confinement.

Under the most severe psychological torture. Urmia Revolutionary Court Branch One,

after two court sessions in the summer of 1400 And three,

finally in the fall of that same year, my death sentence was issued without

sufficient reasons.

And that same sentence in the spring of four hundred and four,

Farvardin one thousand four

hundred and four was overturned in Branch Thirty- Nine of the Supreme Court,

given the lack of legal evidence and documents, the death sentence was quashed.

The case went for trial to Branch Two of the Revolutionary Court, and for the

second time that same court,

under the shadow of the twelve- day war, issued the death sentence…

This call is from prison Urmia, and the caller is in prison,

and again also the same death sentence in the fall of 1403,

in Branch thirty- nine of the Supreme Court, my innocence was proven.

And the Urmia verdict was overturned for the second time,

and the case for the third time was sent to trial in Branch Two of Urmia.

It came. But unfortunately,

due to the situation in the country in the month of Dey 1404,

for the third time again, this time my

death sentence in the Revolutionary Court of Urmia was

issued completely according to the judgment that had been

copied from the previous times.

This sentence given the war conditions that exist in the country,

that we are seeing,

was approved this morning by Branch Thirty- Nine of the Supreme Court.

Hearing a death sentence

might not be understandable for most people,

but this is a kind of verdict that no one and nothing can bear.

My execution destroyed me, shattered me, and every moment…

I see myself dying, and it has brought my family to their knees.

Do not just pass by this simple word“ execution.” Today it is the turn of It

is me today, tomorrow it will be someone else.

From my dear compatriots and the honorable Kurds who live in this country and

anywhere in the world, and the religious mamostas, whose student I was,

from whose student I was, I beg you to be the voice of my voicelessness,

and to carry my voice to human rights organizations and Amnesty

International and the whole world. Urmia is different from the whole of Iran.

I truly say this from the bottom of my heart, my first crime is that I am Kurdish,

and after that, that I was Sunni.

Help me, I am not the first and I will not be the last.

I will not be

the last. Hello…