Amir Abbas Fakhravar (Siavash) was born on July 6, 1975 (15th of Tir 2654 Iranian calendar) at Iqbal Hospital in Tehran. His father, Mohammad Baqer Fakhravar, was an officer in the Air Force, and his mother was Parvaneh Pirdahqan.
He completed middle school at Ibn Sina School in Tehran and graduated from Andisheh High School in Shiraz with a diploma in Mathematics and Physics. In 1992, as the representative of Shiraz high school students, he delivered a speech at the first gathering of educational councils, which led to his first imprisonment in solitary confinement on charges of insulting government officials. In 1994, he entered Urmia University of Medical Sciences. In July 1996, he was arrested inside the university by the Ministry of Intelligence with the cooperation of university security. He was detained in solitary confinement in Urmia for over two months and was tortured.
In September of the same year, he received his first prison sentence from Branch 4 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Urmia, presided over by Judge Haj Hassanlou, on charges of insulting Ayatollah Khamenei. Later that fall, his three-year prison sentence was commuted to exile at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences through coordination with the Central Disciplinary Committee of Medical Universities.
In 1997, Fakhravar was expelled from medical school and began his military service. In the winter of 1997, his first book, The Greenest Eyes on Earth, was published. In 1999, he played a significant role in leading the field activities of the student movement during the July 18 protests, which led to his repeated arrests and imprisonments. In 1999 and 2000, he wrote articles for reformist newspapers and, with the help of Abbas Abdi, had a weekly column titled Who Knows Better Than the People? in the newspaper Mosharekat.
In the summer of 2000, he wrote the novel This Is Not a Well while in Evin Prison. The book was nominated for the Paulo Coelho Literary Prize but came at the cost of eight months in solitary confinement and torture that resulted in broken wrists. During those years, Siavash was tortured in the solitary cells of Ward 209 (Ministry of Intelligence), Ward 240 (Judiciary), Ward 325 (IRGC Intelligence, Evin Prison), and Ward 59 (IRGC Intelligence, located at the Eshratabad Square Detention Center).
In 2002, he was sentenced to eight years in prison by Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court on charges of insulting Khamenei, forming a group to overthrow the government, and propaganda against the regime. He was initially exiled to the ward for criminals in Qasr Prison, but after its closure, he was transferred to the political ward of Evin Prison. According to documents released by the Iranian hacking group “Adalat Ali” (Ali’s Justice), Fakhravar’s charges included: insulting the Supreme Leader, forming an illegal group to overthrow the government, and spreading public discontent through writing books, articles, and giving interviews to foreign media.
