Iraj Mesdaghi is an Iranian-Swedish writer and human rights activist. He began his political activism in the United States with the Confederation of Iranian Students and returned to Iran during the 1979 revolution. In 1981, he was arrested for his activities with the People’s Mojahedeen of Iran (PMOI) and spent over a decade imprisoned in Iran’s notorious prisons, including Evin, Ghazelhasar, and Gohardasht. During his imprisonment, he survived the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners. After his release, Mesdaghi fled to Sweden in 1994, where he continued his advocacy for human rights, workers’ rights, and prison reform. He has authored several works, including the four-volume memoir Neither Life Nor Death, which details his experiences in Iranian prisons, and Hell on Earth, which examines the ideological roots of torture in the Islamic Republic. Mesdaghi also played a pivotal role in the 2019 arrest of Hamid Noury, a former Iranian prison official, by luring him to Sweden, leading to one of Sweden’s largest war crimes trials. He is a member of the Committee for the Observation and Use of Iranian Justice Data, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, which verified leaked Iranian judicial documents revealing extensive political arrests, imprisonments, and executions from 1978 to 2009.
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