1. Zahra Kazemi gained notoriety for her arrest in Iran and the circumstances in which she was held by Iranian authorities, in whose custody she was killed.
16 Facts About Zahra Kazemi
1. 2.
Zahra Kazemi's death was the first time that an Iranian death in government custody attracted major international attention.
3.
Zahra Kazemi was born in Shiraz, Iran, and moved to France in 1974 to study literature and cinema at the University of Paris.
4.
Zahra Kazemi worked in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean and then more frequently in various Middle Eastern countries, including the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
5.
Zahra Kazemi visited the latter two countries both before and during the American occupation.
6.
Immediately before her traveling to Iran, Zahra Kazemi revisited Iraq, documenting the US occupation.
7.
On 23 June 2003, Zahra Kazemi drove to the prison to take pictures of these family members, possessing a government-issued press card that she thought made it permissible for her to work around Tehran, including at Evin.
8.
Zahra Kazemi insisted that she did not photograph any part of the prison, only the street and the demonstrators, who were family members of activist students jailed in prison.
9.
On 11 July 2003, nineteen days after she was arrested, Zahra Kazemi died in Iranian custody in Baghiyyatollah al-Azam Military Hospital.
10.
Two days later, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported that Zahra Kazemi had suffered a stroke while she was being interrogated and died in hospital.
11.
On 16 July 2003, Iran's vice-president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, "conceded that Zahra Kazemi died as a result of being beaten".
12.
Zahra Kazemi mentioned that she saw Kazemi's body before the burial, upon which there were signs of torture.
13.
The lawyers quoted the official report of death that various parts of Zahra Kazemi's body had been damaged and her clothes were torn and bloody, which proves that she had been tortured.
14.
Zahra Kazemi mentioned that since the murderer has not been found, according to the Islamic sources the blood money should be paid by the government to the family.
15.
The lawyers of Zahra Kazemi's family announced that they will appeal the case, asking for a criminal court to be established to reconsider the whole case, or completing the numerous incompletenesses of the file.
16.
Zahra Kazemi's life was one of the inspirations for the popular webcomic, Zahra's Paradise.