Yousef Azizi, known also as Benitorof, is an Ahwazi Arab writer and political activist. He was born in 1951 in Khafajiyeh (Formally Sousangerd) in the province of Ahwaz in Iran. He holds a B.A. in Management from the University of Tehran and has been a member of the Writers Association of Iran since 1978, and became a member of its Board of Directors in 2008. Now he is a honorary member of English PEN.

Azizi is a journalist by profession, and his writings have been in Arabic and Persian. He has published twenty six books and hundreds of articles in the Arab and Persian press. Some of these articles deal with Arab and Iranian literary subjects. His stories, as well as his political and literary articles, have been translated into Arabic, English, Italian and Turkish. His literary works mainly revolve around three different fields: fiction; history and culture, and the translation from Arabic into Persian.

Earlier in 1972 (during the Shah’s regime), he had been in prison for his democratic activities and his advocacy of freedom of thought; and once again in 1981 (in the Islamic regime). Azizi is an unconditional defender of freedom of thought and expression and has always reiterated this in most of his speeches, writings and interviews.