1. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was born on 18 June 1957 and is an Iranian newspaper and magazine publisher who edited many of post-revolutionary Iran's first and most widely circulated independent newspapers, including Kayhan, Jame'eh, Neshat, and Asr-e Azadegan.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin currently serves as the spokesman for the Iranian Committee for the Defense of Freedom of the Press, and as vice president of the Association of Iranian Journalists.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin served as the founding editor-in-chief of the magazine Cultural Kayhan.
In 1998, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin left Kayhan to serve as editor in chief of a new daily newspaper Jame'eh.
In September 1999, Neshat was ordered closed and Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was ordered arrested, after he wrote an article critical of capital punishment in Iran.
All of Mashallah Shamsolvaezin's journals published articles written by authors with a wide spectrum of political opinions, including conservatives as well as exiled dissidents and reformists.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was a recipient of the 2000 CPJ International Press Freedom Award, given by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In June 1998, after Jame'eh was closed, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was jailed for thirty-five days and then released without trial.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin spent 17 months imprisoned at Evin Prison before he was released in the summer of 2001.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin demanded that police produce a warrant that included his name, but was nevertheless arrested and taken away.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was released on bail on February 28,2010.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was released on a bail of 2 billion rials, secured on the deed to his mother's home, and banned from foreign travel.