About Bahman Daroshafaei, our friend, and his detention

Bahman Daroshafaei, translator, publishing activist, and former journalist, was arrested Wednesday, 3 February 2016, in his family home in Tehran. The officials making the arrest had a warrant from Evin Prison Courthouse but it is not clear which official body has prosecuted him and what his charges are. He has not been in contact with his family since.

Bahman Daroshafaei known to many as "Agh Bahman" from his blog, moved to the UK in 2007 to study political science at the London School of Economics and started working at BBC (BBC Persian) in London. Bahman was planning to return to Iran after graduation to work in the publishing industry. However, during the mass protests in Iran in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential elections, BBC Persian was deemed "spiteful" by the Iranian government and he decided to remain in the UK due to his family's concerns for his safety.

During this period, Bahman produced a number of short TV pieces on culture and arts as well as a TV documentary on the late Iranian singer, Farhad Mehrad. Bahman considered this documentary to be his most important work at the BBC. By 2013, he gave in to his passion to work in Iran over his family's concerns. He resigned from the BBC and returned home to Iran. In the initial months after his return, he was interrogated frequently but was never arrested.

With the interrogations over, Bahman dedicated himself to translation and became an evangelist for book reading culture for children. His latest work was a translation of George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" which is scheduled to be published. This followed his published translations of the short story collection "Address: Unknown" by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, and the popular children's book "A Bear Called Paddington" by Michael Bond. A few years earlier, he had translated "Political Philosophy" and "Politics" from the "Very Short Introductions" series by Oxford University Press. Bahman had also worked as a journalist at the Iranian daily Shargh, and is a graduate of the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.