Zalzadeh, publisher of the monthly magazine Mayar, was identified in a Tehran morgue on March 29, five weeks after he disappeared on February 22. According to witnesses, there were three or four stab wounds visible on his chest. A coroner’s report said that his body had been discovered on or about February 24 by a road in the outskirts of Tehran.
Mayar, a magazine that frequently criticized government censorship practices against the media, was forced to close by the authorities in 1995. Zalzadeh was one of several Iranian writers and publishers who had volunteered to share the punishment of magazine editor Abbas Maroufi, who was sentenced in January 1996 to six months in prison and 35 lashes for criticizing the government.