Shahrzad Mirgholikhan ( fa, شهرزاد میرقلیخان) is an Iranian whistleblower.
The
United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida convicted her of attempting to import
night-vision goggles
A night-vision device (NVD), also known as a night optical/observation device (NOD), night-vision goggle (NVG), is an optoelectronic device that allows visualization of images in low levels of light, improving the user's night vision. The dev ...
to Iran, that led to her imprisonment in the United States from 2007 to 2012. Following her release, Mirgholikhan returned to Iran and was appointed to work at Iran's state television. In 2016, she left Iran after being charged with espionage by the
.
Early life and education
She was born to a wealthy family and was brought up as a practicing Muslim. Her mother, Belghis Rovshan was a professor of linguistics and her father, Ghassem Mirgholikhan was an engineer.
Mirgholikhan met her first husband in the mid-1990s and after marriage gave birth to twin daughters, Melika and Melina. She divorced from her husband because he became a drug addict.
In 2000, she married
Mahmoud Seif, two weeks after they met in a restaurant. The couple separated in 2002, but were reunited again in 2003.
During the separation, Mirgholikhan was also briefly married to another man through a sham marriage to obtain permission papers to leave Iran.
Mirgholikhan has studied at a university in Dubai in the early 2000s, obtaining an MBA degree.
IRIB career
Following her release from the U.S. prison, she returned to Iran and was employed at the
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB; fa, صدا و سيمای جمهوری اسلامی ايران, ''Sedā va Sīmā-ye Jomhūri-ye Eslāmi-ye Īrān'', , formerly called National Iranian Radio and Television until the Iranian rev ...
(IRIB), as the director of international relations at
Press TV under
Mohammad Sarafraz, then-head of the channel.
In 2014, when Sarafraz was promoted as the general-director of IRIB, Mirgholikhan became the 'special inspector' of IRIB. According to
Al-Monitor
Al-Monitor ( ar, المونيتور) is a news website launched in February 2012 by the Arab American entrepreneur Jamal Daniel and based in Washington, DC, United States. Al-Monitor provides reporting and analysis from and about the Middle East. ...
, she "poked around everywhere and into everything to stop waste and corruption",
and clashed with
Abdulali Ali-Asgari
Abdulali Ali-Asgari ( fa, عبدالعلی علیعسگری; born 1958 in Ray, Tehran, Iran) is the current CEO of Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Corporation.He is also an Iranian media executive who was the former director-general of ...
, who was IRIB's deputy-director for technical affairs at the time.
Exile
Since 2016, she resides in
Oman.
Bibliography
*
References
External links
U.S. v. Gholikhan, Case No. 05-60238-CR-COHN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mirgholikhan, Shahrzad
1977 births
Living people
People from Tehran
Iranian expatriates in the United Arab Emirates
Iranian expatriates in Oman
Prisoners and detainees of Austria
Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government
Iranian people imprisoned abroad
People convicted of arms trafficking
Press TV people
Iranian memoirists
Iranian media executives
Iranian documentary filmmakers
Iranian whistleblowers