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New Statesman - It could have been me (684 words) |
 | Zarafshan and Amnesty believe his real offence was to have mounted a vigorous legal challenge to the government and its officials over a notorious sequence of deaths, known in Iran as the "serial murders" case, in which three prominent writers and two political activists were mysteriously killed in 1998. |
| Zarafshan, himself a prominent author and translator as well as lawyer, knew the victims and argued that the deaths were sanctioned by the government to deter and suppress free speech. |
| Zarafshan has not been successful in challenging the conviction or the competence of the court, which also banned him from practising law - even though this is not within the usual competence of the military court and the ruling may not be recognised by the Bar Association. |
| PEN American Center - Nasser Zarafshan (738 words) |
| Zarafshan was arrested by members of the Judicial Organization of Armed Forces (JOAF) in October 2000 after giving a speech in the city of Chiraz in which he stated that the intelligence services had murdered five Iranian intellectuals in 1998 in Tehran. |
| Zarafshan denies the firearms and alcohol charges and claims these were planted in his office by the authorities. |
| PEN considers the actions against Nasser Zarafshan to be in retribution for his criticism of the official investigation carried out into the 'serial murders' of 1998 and as a means of silencing others who seek the truth behind the killings. |
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