23 Facts About Maziar Bahari

Maziar Bahari is an Iranian-Canadian journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist.

Maziar Bahari was a reporter for Newsweek from 1998 to 2011.

Maziar Bahari's memoir is the basis for Jon Stewart's 2014 film Rosewater.

Maziar Bahari later founded the IranWire citizen journalism news site, the freedom of expression campaign Journalism Is Not A Crime and the education and public art organization Paint the Change.

Maziar Bahari was born in Tehran, Imperial State of Iran, but moved to Pakistan in 1987 before he immigrated to Canada in 1988 to study communications.

Maziar Bahari's family has been involved in dissident politics in Iran: his father was imprisoned by the Shah's regime in the 1950s, and his sister Maryam under the revolutionary government of Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s.

Maziar Bahari is married to Paola Gourley, an Italian-English lawyer working in London, who gave birth to their first child in October 2009 shortly after his release from prison.

Maziar Bahari graduated with a degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal in 1993, before continuing some additional studies at the nearby McGill University.

In producing the film, Maziar Bahari became the first Muslim to make a film about the Holocaust.

In 1997 Maziar Bahari began reporting in Iran and making independent documentaries, and in 1998 he became Newsweek magazine's Iran correspondent.

Maziar Bahari has produced a number of other documentaries and news reports for Channel 4, BBC and other broadcasters around the world on subjects as varied as private lives of Ayatollahs, African architecture, Iranians' passion for football and contemporary history of Iran.

Maziar Bahari's films have won several awards and nominations including an Emmy in 2005.

In September 2009, Maziar Bahari was nominated by Desmond Tutu for the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, widely known as Spain's Nobel Prize.

The Museum praised Maziar Bahari for being a powerful voice against antisemitism.

Maziar Bahari's confession was dismissed by his family, his colleagues, and Reporters Without Borders, saying that it must have come under duress.

Maziar Bahari says he was asked to promise to spy on dozens of "anti-revolutionary elements" inside and outside Iran for the Revolutionary Guard and report to them weekly.

Maziar Bahari was allowed to leave the country and return to London days before the birth of his daughter.

Maziar Bahari appeared on a segment of the television news program 60 Minutes and was the subject of an article in Newsweek.

Maziar Bahari stated he confessed on television after physical and psychological torture.

Maziar Bahari was held in solitary confinement, interrogated daily, threatened with execution, and repeatedly slapped, kicked, punched, and hit with a belt by his interrogator.

In interviews Maziar Bahari stated that his interrogator told him not to talk about what happened to him in prison, as the Revolutionary Guards have "people all around the world and they can always bring me back to Iran in a bag".

Maziar Bahari has stated that he will not be able to safely return to Iran until the Islamic Republic falls.

Maziar Bahari wrote a prison memoir and family history, Then They Came for Me.