29 March 2020 :

A Judiciary official of Kurdistan Province in Iran on Saturday said seven of the 70 inmates who had broken out of a prison in Saqqez on March 27 have been arrested and two more have surrendered. On Friday evening Iranian media reported that around 80 inmates who were serving terms for common crimes had broken out of the prison in Saqqez, presumably to avoid the coronavirus epidemic in prison conditions. Mohammad Jabbari, the Prosecutor of Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan Province, said the sentences these prisoners were serving would be commuted and their escape would not bar them from being included in the pardon Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued on the occasion of the Iranian New Year. However, if they do not voluntarily go back, a prison term for their new crime will be added to their previous sentence, he said. According to official figures in July 2019 there were more than 189,000 inmates in Iranian prisons. The Iranian Judiciary says it has so far allowed 80,000 prisoners to go on furlough because of the coronavirus, but many of the political prisoners and prisoners of conscience have been excluded from the temporary release from prison.