The Times – Mandana Alijani, doctor, was born on March 21, 1974. She died of cancer on April 6, 2007, aged 33.
As a child in Iran, Mandana Alijani saw her family persistently harassed by the Shah’s agents, and later by the Revolutionary Guards of the succeeding Islamic regime. Three family members were executed and her father died of a heart attack. When she was 12, she fled with her mother to the UK.
Alijani graduated from King’s College London Medical School. She quickly discovered a love and talent for surgery, and was appointed surgical registrar at King’s College Hospital, London, at 26. Her work later focused on cancer, in particular lung and colon cancers.
Childhood experience had introduced Alijani to the issues of human rights, and she became an active member of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) which has a long record of opposition to both the Shah and the present regime. She was also director of the Anglo-Iranian Community in Greater London.
She continually denounced the lack of rights for women in Iran, and only four weeks before her death was helping to organise an International Women’s Day event in Paris to highlight their situation. Lord Slynn of Hadley said at her funeral: “I was always touched by her kindness, her grace, her determination to achieve her goals and her smile.”
