21 Facts About Saeed Mortazavi

Saeed Mortazavi is an Iranian conservative politician, former judge and former prosecutor.

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

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

Saeed Mortazavi 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.

Saeed 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.

Saeed Mortazavi was later assigned to investigate the disputed circumstances of her death.

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

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

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

In 2006, Saeed 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 Saeed Mortazavi's controversial human rights record.

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

Saeed Mortazavi 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.

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

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

Saeed 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.

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

Saeed 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.

Saeed Mortazavi is facing a potential investigation into his conduct of post-vote trials.

In 2010 Saeed Mortazavi was appointed head of Iran's Task Force Against Smuggling, shortly after he was discredited by the release of a report by the Iranian parliament naming him as the man largely responsible for the abuse of political prisoners committed in July 2009 by state security forces at the Kahrizak detention center.

Saeed Mortazavi was "head of Iran's Social Security Organization", a presidentially-appointed post.

The arrest came a day after Ahmadinejad "released a secret video in parliament where Saeed Mortazavi allegedly discussed a fraudulent business deal, implicating Iran's highly influential Larijani family".