Wife of Iranian Mehrdad Jamshidian tries to prevent his deportation from Belarus

The individual communication of the wife of the Iranian citizen Mehrdad Jamshidian Helena,sent from Belarus on October 23, was registered at the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and includes measures of urgency.

Mehrdad Jamshidianhas lived in Belarus since 1993. Since June 2014 he has been kept in the detention center in Minsk Center. The Belarusian authorities can extradite him to Iran, where he awaits prosecution on charges of murder.

In 2012, Mehrdad was detained for the first time after Iranian authorities sent a request to Belarus, demanding extradition with the aim to punish him for the alleged murder of mother and brother, allegedly committed by him during his stay at home. However, as the Iranian authorities didn't provide all the required documents, Mr. Jamshidian was released after five months in detention.

He asked for a refugee status, but the Belarusian authorities denied him. He appealed this decision to the Tsentralny District Court of Minsk, but it sided with the Department of Citizenship and Migration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus. Now the appeal against the verdict of the Tsentralny District Court of Minsk is pending at the Minsk City Court. The date of consideration hasn't been appointed yet. If the court turns the appeal down, the Iranian can be sent to his homeland where he faces the death penalty.

According to human rights activist Raman Kisliak, an alarming moment is that the Belarusian authorities can deport Mr. Jamshidian bypassing the procedure of extradition to a country where he can be sentenced to death. According to him, Mehrdad did not commit murder because he was in Belarus at the time. He also draws attention to the fact that in the repeated extradition request
the Iranian authorities changed the time of the murder.

Mr. Kisliak believes that Belarus needs not only to refrain from punishing its own citizens with death, but also must not extradite people to the countries where they face the threat of the death penalty as a result of imperfect trials, backed by a factor of apostasy – Mehrdad changed the Islamic faith of the Christian.