Nasser Zarafshan, a prominent writer and attorney, was released on March 15, 2007, after serving a five-year prison sentence on politically motivated charges. He was arrested and briefly detained on December 2, 2016, along with his son, Mazdak Zarafshan, poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, and poet Mohammad Mehdipour. They were freed after several hours. They were arrested while attending a memorial event marking the 18th anniversary of the “Chain Murders,” committed by agents of the Islamic Republic; Zarafshan had originally been arrested for speaking out about and representing the families of the murdered writers and intellectuals. Abtin was reportedly later charged after posting a picture of Mazdak Zarafshan, who had been injured by police during the arrest, on Instagram.
Case History
Author, translator, and attorney Dr. Nasser Zarafshan is a member of the Iranian Writers’ Association and a distinguished member of the Iranian Bar Association. His numerous translations and articles have appeared in important periodicals in Iran. He has also acted as the legal representative of two of the families of Iranian writers who were assassinated in November 1998 in what came to be known in Iran as the ‘serial murders’ case. The murdered journalists included Majid Charif, an editorialist with the monthly Iran é Farda, writer-journalists Mohamad Mokhtari and Mohamad Jafar Pouyandeh, and a couple, Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, who were freedom of expression activists. It is reported that Zarafshan has been extremely critical of the shortcomings in the official investigation into these murders.