Marina Nemat

Marina Nemat (Persian: مارینا نِمت‎‎, Russian: Марина Немат; born 22 April 1965 in Tehran) is the author of two memoirs about her life growing up in Iran, serving time in Evin Prison for speaking out against the Iranian government, escaping a death sentence and finally fleeing Iran for a new life in Canada.

Nemat's grandmothers were both Russian, and she was brought up in a Russian Orthodox Christian family in Tehran. Both her grandmothers had, with their Iranian husbands whom they had married before the Russian Revolution of 1917, fled from Russia to Iran as part of the massive wave of migration that had started. Her father worked as a dance teacher, her mother as a hairdresser. She was a high school student when the secularizing monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. As a student Marina Nemat opposed the oppressive policies of the new Islamic government, attended demonstrations and wrote anti-revolutionary articles in a student newspaper.

On January 15, 1982, at age 16, Nemat was arrested and imprisoned for her views against the revolution. She was tortured in the notorious Evin Prison well known for atrocities against political inmates, and sentenced to death. She was rescued by a prison guard, who also obtained commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment. However, after five months of imprisonment, it became clear that Ali had developed an attachment to Nemat intended to force her to marry him. Nemat did eventually marry the guard and was released from prison; he was later assassinated.

Nemat later married Andre Nemat. They escaped to Canada in 1991 and have two sons. Nemat worked at the Aurora franchise of the Swiss Chalet restaurant chain, and wrote her life story in 78,000 words. She knew that many victims did not want to talk about their fate.

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