Interview

Today I interviewed Mohsen Rezaee Bakhtiari, born 9 September 1954. He was born in the Masjed Soleyman, Khuzestan province of Iran. Rezaee married in 1974. He has five children, two sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Ahmad, migrated to the United States in 1998 and sought political asylum. He spoke against the policies of the Iranian Islamic government, and accused his father and others of supporting terrorist acts. He returned to Iran in 2005, recanting his statements. However, he later migrated to the United Arab Emirates in 2011. On 13 November 2011, his body was found dead in a hotel in Dubai. It was reported that he was killed by a hotel servant, but the Dubai Police stated that he had died after taking a large quantity of antidepressants. His brother, Omidvar, is a member of the Parliament of Iran since 2008.He is an Iranian politician, economist, former military commander, and secretary of the ExpediencyDiscernment Council of Islamic Republic of Iran.  He spent his childhood and adolescence in the oil-rich city of Masjed Soleyman (Irsoleymān) in southwestern Iran. Along with his close friends. He started his political and cultural struggle against the Shah' s regime. In the last year of high school, he was arrested by the Shah Security service SAVAK  in Ahvaz, interrogated and tortured. He was 17 when he served five months in solitary confinement. He did not stop his political activities after he was released from prison. Rezaei arrived in Tehran  in 1974 to study mechanical engineering at Iran University of Science andTechnology.   He studied and worked at the same time. SAVAK intensified its crackdown on guerrilla groups to which he was a member. He had to abandon the university. Now he is retired and he is living his life through his family. He is a very intelligent person that told me how different it is to grow up in Iran compared to us growing up in America. He plans to visit America in a couple years and it would be neat to try to keep in touch with him and meet a friend from a different country.