Life
In 1998, he graduated from the Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz School of Law. [3]
Shirin Ebadi, who worked as Ebrahim-Nejad family's pro bono lawyer, described Ebrahim-Nejad as "talented, hardworking, and ambitious" and his father as willing "to sell his small house in the provinces to hire a lawyer to pursue his son's killers". The family also complained to Ebadi of harassment – having stones thrown at them by vigilantes when they attempted to visit their son's grave and being barred from government offices in the wake of the tragedy. [4]
According to Ebadi, after much delay over who had jurisdiction over Ezzat's case, the revolutionary court dismissed it "since no people had officially been charged and since Ezzat was dead anyway." [5]
In 2009, it was reported that his grave at Behesht-e Zahra had been replaced, removing his cause of death. [6]
Zahra "Ziba" Kazemi-Ahmadabadi was an Iranian-Canadian freelance photojournalist. She gained notoriety for her arrest in Iran and the circumstances in which she was held by Iranian authorities, in whose custody she was killed. Kazemi's autopsy report revealed that she had been raped and tortured by Iranian officials while she was at Evin Prison, located within the capital city of Tehran.
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian Nobel laureate, lawyer, writer, teacher and a former judge and founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pioneering efforts for democracy and women's, children's, and refugee rights. She was the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to receive the award.
The Reformists are a political faction in Iran. Iran's "reform era" is sometimes said to have lasted from 1997 to 2005—the length of President Mohammad Khatami's two terms in office. The Council for Coordinating the Reforms Front is the main umbrella organization and coalition within the movement; however, there are reformist groups not aligned with the council, such as the Reformists Front. Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist, was elected president following the 2024 Iranian presidential election, and was subsequently approved by the Supreme Leader on the 28th of July, having been inaugurated two days afterwards in Tehran.
The Iranian student protests of July 1999 were, before the 2009 Iranian election protests, the most widespread and violent public protests to occur in Iran since the early years of the Iranian Revolution.
Sayyid Assadollah Ladjevardi was an Iranian conservative politician, prosecutor and warden. He was one of the officials responsible for the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, and was assassinated by the People's Mujahedin of Iran on 23 August 1998.
Azadeh Moaveni is an Iranian-American writer, journalist, and academic. She is the former director of the Gender and Conflict Program at the International Crisis Group, and is Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism. She is the author of four books, including the bestselling Lipstick Jihad and Guest House for Young Widows, which was shortlisted for numerous prizes. She contributes to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books.
Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly. A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006, after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran. While in prison, he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a democracy". He has been described as "Iran's best-known political prisoner".
Parvaneh Forouhar was an Iranian dissident and activist who was murdered during the chain murders of Iran in November 1998.
Ansar-e Hezbollah is a conservative paramilitary organization in Iran. According to the Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism, it is a "semi-official quasi-clandestine organization of a paramilitary character that performs vigilante duties".
Shahla Lahiji was an Iranian writer, publisher, translator, women's rights activist, and the director of Roshangaran, a publishing house on women's issues.
Amir Farshad Ebrahimi is a founding and former member of hard-line pressure group Ansar-e Hezbollah, a former member of the Basij militia, and an Iranian journalist. Quitting Ansar-e Hezbollah after its involvement in the attack on students in 1999, he was imprisoned in Iran, fled to Turkey and then Germany, where as of 2009 he worked to publicly identify members of plain-clothed men who beat up Iranian protesters of the disputed election.
Starting on 19 July 1988 and continuing for approximately five months, a series of mass executions of Iranian political prisoners ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini and carried out by Iranian officials took place across Iran. Many prisoners were also tortured. The killings took place in at least 32 cities across the country. The killings were perpetrated without any legislative basis and trials were not concerned with establishing the guilt or innocence of defendants. Great care was taken to conceal the killings.
The chain murders of Iran were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other.
Majid Sharif was an Iranian translator and journalist who was one of the victims of the Chain murders of Iran. He was a follower of the late Islamist modernist leftist theoretician Ali Shariati. Articles by him criticizing Iranian government policies appeared in a monthly magazine, Iran-e Farda, which was closed down by court order on December 5, 1998.
Ebrahim Zalzadeh was a dissident Iranian author and editor who was murdered in 1997 in what is thought to have been one of the "chain murders" of dissidents by "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry.
Seyed Mohammad Ali Dadkhah is an Iranian human rights lawyer. He is a co-founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), which has been repressed by the Iranian government. In the aftermath of Iran's disputed June 2009 elections, Dadkhah represented several jailed political and human rights activists. In July 2011, he was sentenced by the Iranian judiciary to nine years in prison for attempting to overthrow the ruling system, among other charges. His sentence was upheld in April 2012, and on 29 September, he was called to prison to begin his sentence.
The Ashura protests were a series of protests which occurred on 27 December 2009 in Iran against the outcome of the June 2009 Iranian presidential election, which demonstrators claim was rigged. The demonstrations were part of the 2009 Iranian election protests and were the largest since June. In December 2009, the protests saw an escalation in violence.
Corruption is a serious problem in Iran, being widespread, mostly in the government. Reformists and conservatives alike – routinely criticize corruption in the government.]
Norwegian-Iranians are Norwegians of Iranian descent. The first wave of Norwegian-Iranians migrated to Norway as a direct consequence of the political instability that followed the Islamic revolution in 1979. The political climate has since forced many others to seek refuge in Norway.
The assassination attempt on the Iranian writers' bus or Armenia's bus story was one of the issues raised in the Chain murders of Iran series that happened in 1996. In this operation, the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran planned to kill a number of writers and poets, but it did not succeed. The film Manuscripts Don't Burn by Mohammad Rasoulof is about this incident.
