Biography
Mehrangiz Kar is an attorney, writer, and activist working towards the promotion of democracy, rule of law, and human rights within the framework of Islamic law of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the revolution in 1979. Despite her work and efforts being frequently impeded and curtailed by the intelligence services of the Islamic Republic, she has been an active public defender in Iran's civil and criminal courts, and has published regularly in several influential and independent Iranian journals. Banned from making public appearances within her country, including conferences, radio and television, Ms. Kar has used international forums as a platform for voicing her opinions and advocating for the democratic, political, legal, constitutional, and human rights of the Iranian people. In April 2000, following her participation in a symposium in Berlin, she was arrested and imprisoned on charges of acting against the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Three of the five charges against her are pending, for which she may again be arrested upon her return.
Ms. Kar, a fellow at the human rights program at Harvard Law School, earned her degree in law from the University of Tehran and is a member of the bar association in Tehran, Iran. She has been a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies. She received the 2002 Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize, awarded jointly by the Human Rights Institute of the Bar of Bordeaux and the European Lawyers Union; the 2000 PEN/NOVIB Award of the International PEN Club in the Netherlands; and the 2000 Donna Dell’anno Award of the Conseil De Lavallee Consiglio Regionale Della Valle d’Aosta in Italy. She recently published her memoirs “Crossing the Red Line: A Struggle for Human Rights in Iran” (Mazda, 2007).
(1.2007)