Kazem Sami

Kazem Sami
Minister of Health
In office 13 February 1979 – 29 October 1979
Prime Minister	Mehdi Bazargan
Preceded by	Manouchehr Razmara
Succeeded by	Mousa Zargar
Member of Parliament of Iran
In office 28 May 1980 – 28 May 1984
Constituency	Tehran, Rey and Shemiranat
Majority	819,186 (50.1%)
Personal details
Born	Kazem Sami Kermani 1935 Mashhad, Pahlavi Iran
Died	23 November 1988(1988-11-23) (aged 52–53) Tehran, Iran
Political party	JAMA
Children	2

Kazem Sami (Persian: کاظم سامی; 1935 – 23 November 1988) was Iran's minister of health in the transitional government of Mehdi Bazargan and leader of The Liberation Movement of People of Iran (JAMA).

Political career

Kazem Sami was one of the leaders and organizers of the Iranian revolution. He served as the minister of health in the Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first minister of health after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He ran in the first Iranian presidential elections, but lost to Abolhassan Banisadr, coming sixth out of the seven presidential candidates. He served as a deputy in the first post-revolutionary Iranian Parliament. After distancing himself from the revolutionary government, Dr Sami remained one of the few active opposition leaders in Iran, openly criticizing the Islamic Republic government. He also wrote a famous open letter to Ayatollah Khomeini, criticizing him for the continuation of the Iran-Iraq war after Iran had recovered her occupied territories, notably the liberation of Khorramshahr.

Murder

Sami was murdered in his private medical clinic in 1988, under suspicious circumstances. He is believed to be one of the first victims of the "chain murders", a series of murders and disappearances of Iranian dissident intellectuals in the 1990s.

See also

• List of unsolved murders