Ramin Pourandarjani

Ramin Pourandarjani (9 June 1983 – 10 November 2009) was an Iranian physician who examined prisoners wounded and killed during the 2009 Iranian election protests. Pourandarjani was born on 9 June 1983 to a middle class family in a northwestern district of the city of Tabriz. He died under mysterious circumstances on November 10, 2009, at the age of 26. Tehran's public prosecutor Abbas Dowlatabadi said Ramin Pourandarjani died of poisoning from a delivery salad laced with an overdose of blood pressure medication. The findings fueled opposition fears that he was killed because of what he knew. Pourandarjani had worked as a physician at the Kahrizak detention center. Iranian authorities earlier had claimed at various points that Pourandarjani had been injured in a car accident, committed suicide, or died of a heart attack in his sleep at the health center at the police headquarters in Tehran where he worked.

Pourandarjani testified before a parliamentary committee investigating misconduct at the Kahrizak jail. This jail was subsequently closed by order of Ayatollah Khamenei, because of the poor conditions there. An investigation was conducted by Iranian judicial authorities on misconduct in this prison. In August, former presidential candidate and cleric Mehdi Karroubi publicly accused Iranian police of having tortured and raped detainees in this prison. Subsequently, police raided Karroubi's office, confiscating names, addresses, and testimonies of witnesses. In October, the deputy chief of the national police, Brig. Gen. Ahmad-Reza Radan announced that ten persons were under investigation for misconduct at the Kahrizak facility, characterizing the issue as "minor."

Following his testimony, Pourandarjani was arrested by the police.

Pourandarjani was a co-author on a paper entitled "Finasteride induced depression: a prospective study," published in BMC Clinical Pharmacology in October, 2006. This paper concluded that finasteride, which is used to treat benign prostatic enlargement and male pattern baldness, might induce depressive symptoms in patients. At the time, Pourandarjani was doing research at the Drug Applied Research Center at the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Tabriz, Iran.

Pourandarjani also volunteered on a medical advice web page, where he answered questions relating to HIV/AIDS.

He was a member of Language improvement committee "LIC", a student base group volunteering in teaching English to medical students.