Akbar Ganji

Akbar Ganji (, born 31 January 1960 in Tehran) is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly.

A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006, after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran.

While in prison, he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a democracy".

He has been described as "Iran's best-known political prisoner".

Having been named honorary citizen of many European cities and awarded distinctions for his writing and civil, Ganji has won several international awards for his work, including the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's International Press Freedom Award, the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, the Cato Institute Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty and the John Humphrey Freedom Award.

Ganji grew up in a devout, impoverished family in Tehran.

Active in the Islamist anti-Shah forces at a "relatively early age", he served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iran–Iraq War.

He holds a master's degree in communications.

In 1994–5, Ganji became disenchanted with the government.

"I saw fascism and political tyranny emerging in Iran. Anyone who asked questions was branded 'anti-revolutionary' and 'against Iran'."

Ganji quit the Guard to become an investigative journalist.

Shortly thereafter, he gained fame and ran afoul of the authorities by "exposing the role of high officials in sanctioning the murder of liberal dissidents".

Ganji has written extensively as a journalist in a series of reformist newspapers, many of which were shut down by the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Possibly Ganji's most famous work was a series of articles in Saeed Hajjarian's Sobh Emrouz daily about the 1998 murders of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran.

Akbar Ganji referred to the perpetrators of the killings with code names such as "Excellency Red Garmented" and their "Excellencies Gray" and the "Master Key".

In December 2000, after his arrest (see below), Akbar Ganji announced the "Master Key" to the chain of murders was former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian.

He "also denounced by name some senior clerics, including Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi for having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders for the assassinations".

Conservatives have attacked Ganji and denied his claim.

Collections of his articles appeared in books, notably, The Dungeon of Ghosts and The Red Eminence And The Grey Eminences (Alijenob Sorkhpoosh va Alijenob-e Khakestari (2000)) focusing on the involvement of the former President of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and his Minister of Intelligence, Ali Fallahian, in the chain murders.

The Red Eminence and the Grey Eminences has been described by the Washington Post newspaper in the US as "the Iranian equivalent of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago".

Ganji took part in a conference in Berlin held by the Heinrich Boell Foundation under the title "Iran after the elections" held in the wake of the Majlis elections of February 2000, which resulted in a huge victory by reformist candidates.

The gathering was termed "anti-Islamic" and "anti-revolutionary" by Iranian state TV, IRIB, which broadcast part of the conference on 18 April 2000.

Returning to Iran from the conference, he was arrested on 22 April 2000, accused of having "damaged national security."

However, the Tehran prosecutor challenged the appeal court decision and brought new charges against him concerning newspaper articles he had written before April 2000 and his possession of photocopies of foreign newspapers.

Found guilty, in January 2001, he was sentenced to ten years followed by five years of internal exile, which meant he would be kept in a specific city other than Tehran and could not leave the country.

On 15 May 2001, an appeal court reduced his 10-year sentence to six months and overturned his additional sentence of five years of internal exile.

On 16 July 2001, he was sentenced to six years imprisonment on charges of "collecting confidential information harmful to national security and spreading propaganda against the Islamic system".

Like other political prisoners before him, Ganji wrote from his prison cell.

His political manifestos and open letters were smuggled out of jail and published on the internet, – two letters "to the free people of the world":.

In his last year in prison, Ganji went on a hunger strike for more than 80 days, from 19 May 2005 until early August 2005, except for 12 days of leave he was granted on 30 May 2005 ahead of the ninth presidential elections on 17 June 2005.

His hunger strike ended after 50 days when "doctors warned he would sustain irreparable brain damage, and he relented."

Many Iranians had not heard of the hunger strike due to press censorship and heavy security and information quarantine in Milad Hospital in Tehran.

His hunger strike mobilized the international human rights community, "including eight former Nobel Peace laureates. Thousands of intellectuals and human rights activists worldwide spoke out on his behalf. It is generally believed that the global support generated for Ganji during this period spared his life."

He was represented by a group of lawyers, including Dr. Yousef Molaei, Abdolfattah Soltani (who was arrested and put in solitary confinement in 2005 on unknown charges), and the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Shirin Ebadi.

In his recent leave in June 2005, Ganji participated in interviews with several news agencies, criticizing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, and asking for his office to be put to a public vote.

This led to a ruling by Saeed Mortazavi, the general prosecutor of Tehran, to arrest him again because of "illegal interviews".

He returned to prison voluntarily on 11 June 2005 and started another hunger strike.

Ganji was released from prison in poor health on 18 March 2006, after serving the full term of his six-year sentence, according to his family and various count-downs set up on many Iranian weblogs.

The one volume of his writings to appear in English translation is The Road to Democracy in Iran (MIT Press, April 2008).