Mazdak Ali Nazari was sentenced to more than three years at Evin Prison for his involvement in student protests. After his release, he began writing fiction and researching, avoiding overtly political writing.
Name: Mazdak Ali Nazari
Born: 1977, Arak, Iran
Career: Journalist and blogger; editor-in-chief of Nasim-e Haraaz; worked on publications such as Tamasha, Shargh and Hamshahri; manager of the website Journalism for Peace.
Charges: Propaganda against the regime, insulting the Supreme Leader and participation in protest rallies.
Mazdak Ali Nazari is a former Persian Literature student at Arak University. He was expelled in 1998 for participating in student rallies.
His was first arrested in 1999 after he took part in a rally commemorating student protests and a riot police raid on a student dorm. In 2007, Ministry of Intelligence agents searched his home and confiscated books, his laptop and several CDs after he’d given an interview to foreign media. On this occasion, he was only interrogated and not arrested. But after the disputed election of 2009, his house was raided once more and he faced arrest again.
He was detained for 91 days altogether, 35 of which were spent in solitary confinement. He was interrogated for 40 days for his alleged role in setting fire to buses during the election protests, sending images and videos to foreign media, disclosing the names of those killed, and sending a list of those arrested to the Guardian newspaper.
He later described his experience at Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court in his blog: “I first saw my new face in the mirror inside the elevator. Was it me? Dirty and disgusting. Three months of growth on my face made me itch. Prison uniform, slippers, metal handcuffs. Even the provincial drug dealers who were brought in from [another] prison were looking at me in surprise and perhaps even fear. I was afraid of them and they were afraid of me.”
Nazari’s lasted only a few minutes and he wasn’t permitted a lawyer. The judge insulted him and sentenced him to three years and four months in prison, 20 lashes and a cash fine.
He began serving his sentence in Cell Block 350 of Evin Prison, known for housing political prisoners, on October 10, 2011. He and a group of other prisoners were then pardoned and released on August 15, 2012. But several days before his release was due, he was punished with 20 lashes, in line with his original sentence. He later wrote that the flogging was nothing in comparison to what he witnessed in prison, including the death of his cellmate by hanging.
Mazdak Ali Nazari continues to write fiction and conduct research.
For more information, visit Journalism is Not a Crime, documenting cases of jailed journalists in Iran.
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
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