Nasser Bakarzadeh, a prisoner held in Urmia Central Prison, has been sentenced to death for the third time by the judicial system of the Islamic Republic on charges of “spying for Israel.”
According to Kolbarnews, on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, the death sentence against Nasser Bakarzadeh was issued by Branch Two of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia and was officially communicated to this prisoner’s lawyers. This comes despite the fact that Branch 39 of the Supreme Court had previously annulled the death sentence issued against him on two separate occasions due to deficiencies in the investigation and failure to substantiate the charge.
Seydad Shirzad, one of the lawyers in this case, stated in a published explanation that Branch Two of the Revolutionary Court of Urmia, without considering the explicit and documented objections of the Supreme Court, once again issued the same previous ruling. According to him, the Supreme Court had specifically emphasized in its previous rulings that the charge of “spying for Israel” had not been proven and that the arguments of the lower court lacked legal validity.
According to this report, the recent ruling was also annulled again by Branch 39 of the Supreme Court due to the same previous deficiencies, and the case has been returned to the Revolutionary Court of Urmia for reconsideration. However, the local judicial system has continued to insist on issuing the death sentence.
Nasser Bakarzadeh, a 25-year-old Kurdish citizen from Urmia, was first arrested in August 2023 by security forces and, after several weeks of interrogation, was temporarily released upon signing a written commitment. He was arrested again on January 2, 2024, and after months of detention and interrogation in the Intelligence Detention Center of the IRGC at Al-Mahdi Garrison in Urmia, he was transferred to the central prison of this city.
Since November 2024, this Kurdish prisoner has faced death sentences multiple times; rulings that have each time been annulled by the Supreme Court due to serious deficiencies in the judicial process and the invalidity of the evidentiary basis of the charges, yet continue to be repeated by the Revolutionary Court of Urmia.
