Her face adorned a thousand placards and posters, an emblem of the failed Iranian uprising. The photograph of Neda Agha Soltan, who was shot dead on a Tehran street by a government sniper during the anti-regime demonstrations in 2009, was used in television broadcasts, web pages and newspapers all around the world. Unfortunately, it wasn't her.
As 26-year-old Neda bled to death on the pavement, her shocked eyes stared into an onlooker's mobile phone video camera and the terrible images were uploaded to international websites. It made her a martyr to those inside and outside Iran protesting at the flawed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Scrambling to cover the story and looking to find a photograph of the dead woman in life, journalists who had been banned at the time from entering Iran lifted a photograph of a woman called Neda Soltani from her Facebook page and published it – and the life of the 32-year-old, middle-class university English lecturer changed for ever.
"It destroyed my life," said Soltani, who has now written a book called My Stolen Face and still has to endure her image appearing as if she were the murdered Neda Soltan. » | Tracy McVeigh | Sunday, October 14, 2012
