Saeed Mortazavi

Saeed Mortazavi
Mortazavi after a court session (April 2015)
Head of Social Security Organization
In office 18 March 2012 – 18 August 2013
President	Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Preceded by	Majid Mousavian
Succeeded by	Taghi Norbakhsh
Head of Taskforce to Fight Foreign-Exchange Smuggling and Drug Trafficking
In office 16 December 2009 – 14 July 2012
President	Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Preceded by	Gholam-Hossein Elham
Succeeded by	Fada Hossein Maleki
Deputy to Prosecutor-General of Iran
In office 29 August 2009 – August 2010
Appointed by	Sadeq Larijani
Prosecutor-General of Tehran
In office 18 May 2003 – 29 August 2009
Appointed by	Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Head of the Islamic Revolutionary Court Branch 1410, Press Special Court
In office late 1990s – early 2000s
Appointed by	Mohammad Yazdi
Personal details
Born	1967 Taft, Yazd
Nationality	Iranian
Spouse(s)	Homa Fallah-Tafti
Alma mater	University of Judicial Sciences and Administrative Services
Religion	Islam
Signature

Saeed Mortazavi (Persian: سعید مرتضوی‎‎, born 1967) is an Iranian politician, former judge and former prosecutor. He was prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, and Prosecutor General of Tehran, a position he held from 2003 to 2009. He has been called as "butcher of the press" and "torturer of Tehran" by some observers. Mortazavi has been accused of the torture and death in custody of Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi by the Canadian government and was named by 2010 Iranian parliamentary report as the man responsible for abuse of dozens and death of three political prisoners at Kahrizak detention center in 2009. He 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. On 15 November 2014, he was banned from all political and legal positions for life.

Before his prosecutorial appointment, Mortazavi was a judge.

On 18 May 2003 he became prosecutor general of Tehran, a position he held until 29 August 2009. The post had been unfilled for the previous eight years, since Iran abolished prosecutors in 1995. In the intervening years judges performed the prosecutor's role.

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. As a judge, Mortazevi was involved in some unknown capacity in Kazemi's interrogation. He was later assigned to investigate the disputed circumstances of her death, although it was subsequently reported that Mortazevi had decided to let a military court perform the investigation. In late 2003, the Iranian Parliament issued a report accusing Mortazavi of trying to cover up Kazemi's death and forcing witnesses to the event to change their stories. Murtazevi strongly denied the accusations, although the government of Canada continues to claim that not only did Mortazavi order Kazemi's arrest, but he also supervised her torture and was present when she was killed.