Saeed Mortazavi

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Saeed Mortazavi is a prominent Iranian jurist, prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, and current Prosecutor General of Tehran, a position he has held since 2003.^[1]

Mortazevi, a former judge, was promoted to the position of Prosecutor General on May 18, 2003. The position had sat unfilled for the previous eight years, since Iran abolished prosecutors in 1995. In the intervening years judges performed the prosecutor's role.^[2]

Mortazavi is also notable for his involvement in the case of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer who died in the custody of Iranian officials in 2003. As a judge, Mortazevi was involved in some unknown capacity in Kazemi's interrogation. He was later assigned to investigate the disputed circumstances of her death,^[3] although it was later reported that Mortazevi had decided to let a military court perform the investigation.^[4] In late 2003, the Iranian Parliament issued a report accusing Mortazavi of trying to cover up Kazemi's death and forcing witnesses to the event to change their stories. Mortazevi strongly denied the accusations,^[5] although the government of Canada continues to claim that not only did Mortazavi order Kazemi's arrest, but supervised her torture and was present when she was killed.^[6]

Mortazavi is often portrayed in the western media as a supposed symbol of problems within the judicial system of Iran. It has been reported that Iranians call him the "butcher of the press". As a judge he shut down 60 pro-reform newspapers.^[2] In 2005, journalists reported receiving death threats after testifying about their alleged torture at the command of Mortazevi. In a press conference, Mortazevi denied the journalists had been mistreated while in state custody.^[7]^[8] Also in 2005, Mortazevi ordered Iran's major ISPs to block access to Orkut and other blogging and social networking websites.^[9]

In 2006, Mortazavi was sent to Geneva as part of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a decision that was met with some criticism at home and abroad, due to Mortazavi's controversial human rights record. Human Rights Watch urged Iran to remove him from the delegation, and other countries to decline to meet with the Iranian delegation until his removal.^[1]^[10] Mortazevi's first official meeting was with the also-controversial Zimbabwean minister of justice Patrick Chinamasa.^[11] Mortazavi took advantage of his position on the delegation to advocate the right of access to high technology, including nuclear power, for all nations. He also warned the council that it should avoid being manipulated into doing the bidding of powerful states, and that it should investigate human rights abuses perpetrated by western powers, notably human rights abuses in the War on Terror, extraordinary rendition, Islamophobia, criticism of the Islamic dress code and veil, and the suppression of the freedom of speech of Holocaust deniers.^[12]

On February 15, 2008, it was announced that Mortazavi had banned five Iranian websites that comment on politics and current events. Mortazevi was quoted as saying they were "poisoning the electoral sphere" in advance of Iran's mid-March parliamentary elections.^[13]^[14]

In 2008, it was reported that Mortazavi had detained students due to protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government; the students alleged abuse while in jail.^[14] ^[14] ^[15]^[16]