IranWire has obtained documents and information indicating that the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic has seized the share of Masoud Bakhtiari, a monarchist political activist who has sought asylum in Armenia, from a jointly owned property inherited from his father by him, his sisters, his brothers, and his mother.
Mr. Bakhtiari’s name also appeared in one of the property confiscation lists published by the Judiciary in April.
Masoud Bakhtiari told IranWire that this property, which his father spent years of hard work purchasing and building, belongs to a defunct shoe factory in Hamadan. The factory was known before the revolution as Wales Shoes, and its owner, Masoud Bakhtiari’s father, Haj Seyfollah Bakhtiari, was later forced to rename it Ziba Shoes after the revolution.
According to Mr. Bakhtiari, the Iranian government has attempted to claim this property for itself several times: “We have had this property since the Shah’s era; my father bought it through hard work. My father was a factory owner. He holds 20 to 30 certificates of appreciation from various countries for the quality of his products. A few years ago, they also forcibly took 300 meters of it from us under the pretext of widening the road.”
