To: Shahrzad Mojab Director, Women and Gender Studies Institute University of Toronto
AECP OISE/UT, 252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1V6, Canada

July 22, 2007

Dear Ms. Mojab,

We are a group of women who are former political prisoners and part of the organizing committee of the Second Seminar on the Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran. This is a seminar that will be held in August 2007 in Cologne, Germany. Based on what each one of us experienced and witnessed in our long imprisonment terms in the Islamic Republic’s prisons, we strongly believe and can prove that Prisoner of Tehran, by Marina Nemat, is a fabrication. Not only does it distort the depiction of real events, it is, in fact, a work of fiction and imagination. During her time in Iran’s prisons, Marina Nemat was a government collaborator (tavab, a so-called repentant).

The book serves to contaminate and discredit the image of former political prisoners, their struggles, and their resistance in prison. Above that, this book is a blatant insult to the people of Iran, and to the thousands who were executed in the Islamic Republic’s prisons.

We firmly ask that the University of Toronto, and especially the Women and Gender Studies Institute, as a scientific institute, retract their support and promotion of this book. We demand the publication of a public retraction letter. We further insist that all advertisements related to Prisoner of Tehran be taken off your institution’s internet site and that our protest letter be published on the university’s site in the section: “Memoirs and the Arts of the Women Political Prisoners of Iran.”

As former political prisoners of the Islamic Republic of Iran, we are asking for a responsible official reaction from the University of Toronto. We hope that in the future there will be more attention paid to such matters so that the reputation of the university will not be diminished.

For further explanation or questions please contact our representative, former political prisoner Azizeh Shahmoradi, at (azizehsh@yahoo.com).


Regards,

Women’s Working Group of the Organizing Committee
The Seminar on the Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran

Dialog, postamt 1
Postlagern
04109 Leipzig / Germany
Email: dialogt@web.de
http://www.dialogt.org/english/http://dialogt.org
http://www.dialogt.net