Background
Khalaji was the son of a farmer in the province of Isfahan and came from "a conservative religious background." When he was 5 years old, he moved to Tehran, where his three brothers lived.
Khalaji was the son of a farmer in the province of Isfahan and came from "a conservative religious background." When he was 5 years old, he moved to Tehran, where his three brothers lived.
He has been described as "a prominent Qom cleric close to reformist clerics Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri and Ayatollah Yousef Sane"i." He was arrested on January 13, 2010, taken to Evin Prison in Tehran and as of January 26 was being held "without charge in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer or family visits."
In 1968, after graduating from high school and then Shokooh English Language Institute, he started to work as a bank accountants In 1969, under the influence of the rising religious fervor in Iran, he left "his job in the bank and its good salary" and moved to Qom with his fiancée Mohtaram, to begin study in a seminary, becoming the first in his family to be a cleric. In Qom he joined the pro-Khomeini clique and became a disciple of Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution he was arrested and imprisoned by the Shah"s regime three times as a political activist, being released for the last time in February 1979 after the Shah had been toppled.
His 2010 arrest was by four agents of intelligence ministry and could now face trial in the Special Court for the Clergy.
Books, letters, a computer and his family’s passports were also confiscated. Another source credits his arrest to "several speeches critical of the authorities" including their "use of violence against peaceful protestors".
