Saeed Mortazavi

Saeed Mortazavi (, born 26 November 1967 ) is an Iranian conservative politician, former judge and former prosecutor.

The post had been unfilled for eight years since Iran abolished prosecutors in 1995.

In the intervening years, judges performed the prosecutor's role.

He was the prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, and Prosecutor General of Tehran, a position he held from 2003 to 2009.

He has been called as "butcher of the press" and a "torturer of Tehran" by some observers.

On 18 May 2003, he became prosecutor general of Tehran, a position he held until 29 August 2009.

Mortazavi is notable for his involvement in the case of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer who died in the custody of Iranian officials in 2003.

As a judge, Mortazevi was involved in some unknown capacity in Kazemi's interrogation.

He was later assigned to investigate the disputed circumstances of her death,.

However, it was subsequently reported that Mortazevi had decided to let a military court perform the investigation.

In late 2003, the Iranian Parliament issued a report accusing Mortazavi of trying to cover up Kazemi's death and forcing witnesses to the event to change their stories.

Murtazevi strongly denied the accusations, although the government of Canada continues to claim that not only did Mortazavi order Kazemi's arrest, but he also supervised her torture and was present when she was killed.

Mortazavi is often portrayed in the Western media as a symbol of problems within the judicial system of Iran.

It has been reported that Iranians call him the "butcher of the press".

As a judge, he shut down 60 pro-reform newspapers.

In 2004 he was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists who were held for long periods and forced to sign "confessions" of their "illicit activities".

In 2005, journalists reported receiving death threats after testifying about their alleged torture at the command of Mortazevi.

In a press conference, Mortazevi denied the journalists had been mistreated.

At the same time, in state custody.

Also in 2005, Murtazevi ordered Iran's major ISPs to block access to Orkut and other blogging and social networking websites.

In 2006, Mortazavi was sent to Geneva as part of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a decision that was met with some criticism at home and abroad due to Mortazavi's controversial human rights record.

Human Rights Watch urged Iran to remove him from the delegation and other countries to decline to meet with the Iranian delegation until his removal.

Mortazevi's first official meeting was with the also-controversial Zimbabwe a minister of justice Patrick Chinamasa.

Mortazavi took advantage of his position on the delegation to advocate the right of access to high technology, including nuclear power, for all nations.

He also warned the council that it should avoid being manipulated into doing the bidding of powerful states and that it should investigate human rights abuses perpetrated by Western powers, notably human rights abuses in the War on Terror, extraordinary rendition, Islamophobia, criticism of the Islamic dress code and veil, and the suppression of the freedom of speech of Holocaust deniers.

On 15 February 2008, it was announced that Mortazavi had banned five Iranian websites that comment on politics and current events.

Mortazevi said they were "poisoning the electoral sphere" before Iran's mid-March parliamentary elections.

In 2009, it was reported that Mortazavi had detained students due to a protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government; the students alleged abuse while in jail.

He has been involved in more contentious cases since then as well.

Mortazavi was a prosecutor on the cases of Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist accused of spying, and Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, whose posts were critical of the establishment.

During the 2009 election dispute across Iran, Mortazavi actively suppressed the demonstrations.

He has signed arrest warrants for reformers, such as Saeed Hajjarian, and is believed to be instrumental in the more than 600 arrests nationwide.

The report stated that 147 prisoners arrested for participating in demonstrations against irregularities in the 2009 election of President Ahmadinejad had been "held in a 70-square-meter room for four days without proper ventilation, heating and food on Mortazavi's orders".

Three of the inmates died, including Mohsen Rouhalamini, the son of a "distinguished government scientist."

Mortazavi maintained that the prisoners had "died from meningitis" and that "inoculation kits had been sent to detention centers" to prevent the condition from spreading.

Mortazavi has been accused of the torture and death in custody of Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi by the Canadian government and was named by 2010 Iranian parliamentary report as the man responsible for the abuse of dozens and death of three political prisoners at Kahrizak detention center in 2009.

In early 2010 the Iranian parliament released a report identifying Saeed Mortazavi as "the main culprit in the scandal" over the Kahrizak detention center.

He was put on trial in February 2013 after a parliamentary committee blamed him for the torture and deaths of at least three detainees who participated in the protests against President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's reelection.

On 15 November 2014, he was banned from all political and legal positions for life.

Before his prosecutorial appointment, Mortazavi was a judge.