Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji (Persian: اکبر گنجی , born 31 January 1960 in Tehran)[2][3] is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.[4] He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident",[5] and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly. A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006, after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran.[6] While in prison, he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a democracy".[7] He has been described as "Iran's best-known political prisoner".[8][9]
Akbar Ganji
Having been named honorary citizen of many European cities and awarded distinctions for his writing and civil,[10] Ganji has won several international awards for his work, including the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award,[11] Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's International Press Freedom Award, the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders,[12] the Cato Institute Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty and the John Humphrey Freedom Award.