SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A court in Erbil on Monday handed jail sentences to four more activists detained in Duhok last year, their lawyer said.
Erbil criminal court held a trial on the cases of activists Sherwan Taha, Masoud Ali, Bandawar Ayub and Kargar Abbas on Monday morning.
Lawyer Bashdar Hassan said the court sentenced Sherwan to two years and six months and Masoud to three years and six months in jail.
The other two activists were given a year and two months each in jail, the lawyer said.
“But Bandawar and Kargar will be released today because they have served the prison term,” he told Esta Media Network.
“The voice message provided as evidence against them had nothing in it, but the issue is political,” Hassan said.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams-Iraqi Kurdistan (CPT) said there was no evidence against the activists, calling the imprisonment sentence a “political revenge”.
“Two evidences were given and they were weak,” CPT representative Kamaran Othman told Esta Media Network.
Othman further said the U.S. consulate in Erbil was also accused of helping prisoners to bring anti-government protests in Baghdad to the Kurdistan Region.
“If it is a crime to call for financial support from the consulates, all the community in Kurdistan Region is suspects,” he added.
In October, the Erbil court sentenced five other activists to one year each in prison, but they were set to be freed because they served the time of the imprisonment.
The court also sentenced Badal Barwari and Omed Baroshki to one year in jail last month. Barwari was released after serving the time.
Journalist Baroshki remained in jail due the one-year and six-months imprisonment sentence given to him by a court in Duhok on three different cases.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams, which has observed trials of the journalists and activists, said it heard “no evidence” against Barwari and Baroshki during the trial.
“We heard no evidence that Badal Barwari and Omed Baroshki in any way incited violence or were part of planning violent protests,” it said in a statement.
