Hedayat Matine-Daftary

Hedayat Matine-Daftary is a lawyer and former vice-president of the Iranian Bar Association. In 1979 he was a founder of the National Democratic Front of Iran (NDFI) which advocated democracy and a secular state. The Front was banned by Khomeini later that year and Matine-Daftary was forced into exile. He has since devoted himself to campaigning for human rights in Iran, the re-introduction of secular judicial institutions and observance of international human rights conventions. Most recently as a member of the Jurists Steering Committee he helped to establish the Iran Tribunal, an International People’s Tribunal, convened in 2012 at the Peace Palace in The Hague to investigate serious allegations of human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 1980s. Matine-Daftary also gave expert evidence before the international panel of judges presided over by Judge Johann Kriegler of South Africa.

Articles by Hedayat Matine-Daftary