Kamran Samimi was an English languageprofessor and a translator. He was a member of the Baha'i Assembly in Iran who lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 16 years. In 1974 he returned to Iran and in the winter of 1982, he was executed on the charges of defending the Baha'i Faith religion.
Early life
Kamran Samimi was born in November 1926 to a Baha'i family. In 1942, Kamran, who was 19 years old at that time, went to India to continue his education. There he met Shirin Driver and they got married. After a while, he returned to Iran and founded a foreign language institution. In 1955, along with his family, he went to Indonesia to assist and support the Baha'i community that was there for 16 years. During the time that he was there, Kamran was an interpreter of the Iranian Embassy in Jakarta, and for some time he was a university professor. He was also a member of the Jakarta Local Spiritual Assembly. After returning to Iran, the National Spiritual Assembly appointed Kamran as a member of the Legal Board to defend the rights of the Baha'is. In the summer of 1981, when a number of members of the Baha'i National Assembly were abducted and disappeared, he was elected as one of the members of the NationalSpiritual Assembly.
Arrestment and Execution
According to the Amnesty International, in November 1981, the Iranian authorities arrested eight members of the National Spiritual Assembly at the house of Zoghullah Momen. In December 13, 1981, Kamran Samimi along with Jinous Mahmoudi, Mahmoud Majnoob, Jalal Azizi, Mehdi Amin Amin, Ezzat Forouhi, Sirous Roshani, and Ghodrat Rouhani was arrested and taken to prison. Farideh Samimi, Kamran's wife, who was also arrested along with the members of the assembly, wrote: “They showed us no verdict for our arrestment. Mr. Amin Amin, who was a lawyer, asked do you have any documents to show why you have arrested us? But, they had and didn't need any documents or verdicts to show us. They just said and did whatever they wanted to”. Then on December 27, 1981, eight of the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly were executed without a trial.
After Execution
The execution of Kamran and the other members of the National Spiritual Assembly was not officially announced on December 27, 1981. First, the government denied it, but then, Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardebili, who was the head of the Judicial System of Iran, announced that eight Baha'is were executed. Thus, this way, the execution of the Baha'is took on a formal procedure.
