Saeed Kamali Dehghan

Saeed Kamali Dehghan (Persian: سعید کمالی دهقان born 1 May 1985 in Karaj, Iran)^[1] is an Iranian-British journalist who writes for The Guardian.^[2] He was named as the 2010 Journalist of the Year in Britain by the Foreign Press Association.^[3] He is a staff journalist for The Guardian working from its London offices, and has been an Iran correspondent from Tehran for the newspaper in the past, especially in summer 2009.^[1] He is a co-producer of the 2010 HBO documentary For Neda,^[4] which was a recipient of the 70th annual Peabody Award.^[5]

Saeed Kamali Dehghan
Born	Persian: سعید کمالی دهقان 1 May 1985 (1985-05) (age 38) Karaj, Iran
Occupation	Journalist

Biography

 

Antony Thomas, Kamali Dehghan and producer Carleen L. Hsu with a Peabody Award, May 2011

Kamali Dehghan was born on 1 May 1985 in Karaj, a city near Tehran, the capital of Iran. He graduated in 2011 from the City University Department of Journalism, with a Master of Arts (MA) degree in International Journalism,^[6] after receiving a scholarship from Open Society Institute. His BA was in Rolling Stock Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology.

He has written in Persian, English, and French for several different newspapers around the world,^[1] including Le Monde,^[7] Shargh and Etemaad. He covered Tehran unrest after the Iranian presidential election, 2009, for the foreign media, including CNN,^[8] CBC,^[9] France 24, Channel 4^[10] and The Guardian.^[11]

For Neda (2010)

Saeed Kamali Dehghan was a co-producer of the 2010 HBO documentary For Neda.^[12] On 3 March 2020, he said he regrets making that documentary because "I was naive to believe the Western narrative about her death. As a journalist, I was sent to Iran to humanize their narrative naively, but I didn't know their narrative. When they got my footage from me, from then on, I was nobody, and I was deeply upset about the film, even though I didn’t show it at the time."^[13]

Twelve Plus One (2017)

Saeed Kamali Dehghan's first book, Twelve Plus One, was published in Iran in January 2017 by Ofoq Publications. It is a collection of his interviews with 12 writers and one film-maker, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Paul Auster, EL Doctorow and David Lynch.^[14] He has conducted several other original interviews with internationally known writers including John Barth, E. L. Doctorow, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Amélie Nothomb, Andreï Makine, Isabel Allende, Tzvetan Todorov, T. C. Boyle, Alain de Botton and Noam Chomsky.

Murder of Jamal Khashoggi (2018)

On 8 November 2018, Kamali Dehghan tweeted that Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been murdered because he was planning on publishing details about the Iranian government's ties to Mohammed bin Salman and Saud al-Qahtani. Shortly afterwards, he deleted the tweets.^[15] The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, dismissed the comments as "improbable".^[16]

Awards

Saeed Kamali Dehghan was named the 2010 Journalist of the Year by the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in London.^[3] His co-produced film For Neda received the FPA award for the Best Documentary of the Year,^[17] and was also a recipient at the 70th annual Peabody Awards^[5] at a ceremony hosted by Larry King at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York on 23 May 2011.^[18]

References

1. Saeed Kamali Dehghan profile at The Guardian.
2. Batty, David (24 November 2010). "Guardian journalist wins award for Iranian protest coverage". Retrieved 13 June 2017 – via The Guardian.
3. . London: FPA. Archived from the original on 7 January 2011. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
4. "HBO: For Neda: Synopsis". HBO. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
5. . Archived from the original on 4 April 2011. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
6. . City, University of London. Archived from the original on 24 May 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
7. "Abonnement Le Monde". Le Monde.fr. Retrieved 13 June 2017.^{[permanent dead link]}
8. Kamali Dehghan, Saeed (13 June 2010). "The day I fled Iran in terror and left my family behind – a journalist's story". The Observer.
9. "Voting for a new president in Iran | The Current". CBC. 14 June 2013. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
10. Newman, Cathy (2 February 2018). "Saeed Kamali Dehghan on Iran veils protests: 'It's sparking a debate in Iran that I have not seen before'". Channel 4 News. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
11. Kamali Dehghan, Saeed (16 June 2009). "Iran: "I will continue to report, but I fear that I may be arrested" - Index on Censorship". www.indexoncensorship.org. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
12. "Saeed Kamali Dehghan". IMDb. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
13. Homaeefar, Mohammad (3 March 2020). "Guardian reporter speaks out on Neda Agha-Soltan, Jamal Khashoggi, Iran International TV, Masih Alinejad". Tehran Times. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
14. "Maybe We Descend From The Trees: A reading with Fereshteh Ahmadi - What's On - Free Word". Retrieved 13 June 2017.
15. "افشاگری خبرنگار گاردین: "خاشقجی" منبع مالی شبکه"ایران اینترنشنال" را لو داد". Asriran (in Persian). Retrieved 14 May 2023.
16. . Iran International (in Persian). 12 November 2018. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
17. . Archived from the original on 7 January 2011. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
18. Atkin, Hillary (30 May 2011). "Larry King Keeps Things Moving as Peabody Award Winners Bask in the Limelight". mediavillage.com.

External links

• Saeed Kamali Dehghan official website
• Column archive in The Guardian
• Saeed Kamali Dehghan at IMDb

 

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