Mohammad Seifzadeh ( fa, سید محمد سیف زاده - born 1948) is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge,
human rights
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
activist and a cofounder of
Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran. He is the older brother of Hossein Seifzadeh, an Iranian political scientist.
Life
Seifzadeh was a member of
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolog ...
laureate
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi ( fa, شيرين عبادى, Širin Ebādi; born 21 June 1947) is an Iranian political activist, lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was ...
's legal team in 2004 when she represented the mother of Canadian photojournalist
Zahra Kazemi
Zahra "Ziba" Kazemi-Ahmadabadi ( fa, زهرا کاظمی احمدآبادی; 1948 – 11 July 2003) was an Iranian-Canadian freelance photojournalist. She gained notoriety for her arrest in Iran and the circumstances in which she was held by I ...
, who had been murdered in an Iranian prison, allegedly by an Iranian security officer.
In October 2010, Seifzadeh was charged with "collusion and assembly with intent to disrupt internal security," "propagation activities against the regime," and "establishing the Center for Human Rights Defenders."
He was sentenced to 9 years of prison and 10 years of ban from the practice of law. He called the ruling the result of "an unlawful court proceeding".
While appealing the ruling, Seifzahed remained at liberty. In April 2011, he visited
Urumiyeh on the Turkish border and was arrested by Iranian officials on charges of attempting to leave the country illegally. Seifzahed's lawyer argued that he had only been in the city for a research project.
Since then, various organizations such as the
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have called for his release.
Amnesty International designated him a
prisoner of conscience.
See also
*
Human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
The state of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been criticized by Iranians and international human rights activists, by writers, and NGOs. The United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission
*
Intellectual movements in Iran
References
External links
Mohammad Seifzadeh's Personal Weblog
1948 births
Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by Iran
Iranian dissidents
Iranian prisoners and detainees
Living people
20th-century Iranian judges
Iranian human rights activists
People convicted of spreading propaganda against the system by the Islamic Republic of Iran
People from Qom
21st-century Iranian judges
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