Mohammad Mostafaei

In 2010, he moved to Norway, having left Iran due to alleged persecution by authorities for his defense of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

[2] Mostafaei remembered his childhood as difficult due to his family's poverty and his father's extreme mood swings.

At the age of 14, he attended a public hanging of "a very young man" and was profoundly disturbed by the sight, an incident he later credited with his decision to study law.

[2] Mostafaei states that he appealed forty death sentences of juvenile defendants during his work in Iran, of which eighteen were overturned.

During the case, Mostafaei's wife, father-in-law, and brother-in-law were imprisoned in what Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty described as "an apparent attempt to pressure him to back down.