Maziar Bahari

Maziar Bahari

Maziar Bahari is an Iranian-Canadian playwright, film-maker, and reporter for Newsweek. Bahari graduated with a degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal. Soon after, he made his first film The Voyage of the Saint Louis about the fatal voyage of more than 900 German Jewish refugees in 1939. He has produced a number of documentaries and news reports for Channel 4 and BBC on subjects as varied as Ayatollah Sistani, Muqtada al-Sadr and human rights in Iraq. A retrospective of Bahari’s films was organized in November 2007 by the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. In 1998, Bahari became Newsweek magazine’s Iran correspondent. In September 2009, Bahari was nominated by Desmond Tutu for the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord. During the 2009 Iranian election protests he was arrested without charge, and detained. He was coerced into a televised confession acknowledging Western journalists as spies Bahari was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Iran where he was interrogated daily. After 118 days in jail, Bahari was released on bail on October 20, 2009.  Bahari faces 15 different charges and has stated that he will not be able to safely return to Iran until the Islamic Republic falls. His arrest and detention were the subject of a November 22, 2009 segment of 60 Minutes and an article in Newsweek, “118 Days, 12 Hours, 54 Minutes”, detailing his experience in prison.