Neda Soltani (

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

: ندا سلطانی); born 1977, in Isfahan, is an Iranian exile. During the

2009 Iranian election protests After incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in the 2009 Iranian presidential election, protests broke out in major cities across Iran in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The protests c ...

, she was teaching English at Azad University when her

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

profile photo was mistakenly published in many articles about the death of the similarly-named Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot and killed during the protests. As a result, her identity was confused with that of Agha-Soltan, to whom she also bore a superficial facial resemblance. She tried in vain to remove her photo from the Internet and the media. Claims and counter-claims were made, including claims from the Iranian government that she was the same person as Agha-Soltan, and had faked her own death, and others who claimed that she was herself an agent of the Iranian government, impersonating Agha-Soltan to sully her memory. Within two weeks, she had to flee from Iran to avoid arrest. She was granted

asylum in Germany The right of asylum for victims of political persecution is a basic right stipulated in the Constitution of Germany. In a wider sense, the right of asylum recognises the definition of ' refugee' as established in the 1951 Refugee Convention and ...

in 2010. , Soltani remains exiled from Iran, and is under Germany's asylum. She has authored a book, ''My Stolen Face'', narrating her story of the incident.

References

Living people Iranian exiles 1977 births Iranian emigrants to Germany Iranian emigrants to the United States {{Iran-activist-stub