On 2 December 1998, Mohammad Mokhtari, an Iranian writer, left his residence and did not return home. A week later his body was identified at the coroner's office. The next to disappear was Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, an author and "one of the most active translators of the country," whose body was discovered four days after leaving his office on 8 December. Pooyandeh and Mokhtari's bodies were both found around Shahriar, a "mini-city" in the south of Tehran, and both had apparently been strangled. On the day Pooyandeh's body was found, 12 December 1998, fifty writers called on President Khatami to find the persons behind the crimes.