After being released from prison in 2006, Akbar Ganji fled Iran. He has been granted honorary citizenship in several European cities and he now lives in exile in the U.S. He is a columnist for The Huffington Post and a prolific writer, and has been continuing to give talks throughout Western Europe and North America advocating for democracy in Iran. His writings have been banned in Iran.
Case History
Akbar Ganji is considered Iran’s leading investigative journalist. He is also the author of the best-selling book Dungeon of Ghosts, a collection of Ganji’s newspaper articles published in early 2000, in which he implicated the former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other leading conservative figures in the “serial murders” of five writers and intellectuals in 1998. The book is said to have seriously damaged the reputation of Rafsanjani, and is thought to have been a major factor in the conservative defeat in the parliamentary elections of February 2000.
The authorities had granted Ganji medical leave on May 29, 2005. Ganji supposedly went missing on June 7, which led to an issuing of a warrant for his arrest. In a letter distributed by his wife, he denies that he went into hiding or had broken any law. He was outspoken in his criticisms of the Iranian government during his leave and suggests that this has led to his re-imprisonment. He was returned to Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 11, 2005. After he was returned to solitary confinement he resumed his hunger strike and over the next month lost over 22 kilograms. On July 17, 2005, he was rushed to the hospital in Northern Tehran, where he finally ended his 60-day hunger strike. On Nov. 2, 2005, Human Rights Watch reported that Ganji said that Judiciary officials have tortured him to renounce his writings.