The activist daughter of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been given a five-year jail term.
The charges against Faezeh Hashemi were not specifically stated by the attorney. However, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency, Hashemi was charged with “propaganda against the system” by Tehran’s public prosecutor last year.
She was detained in Tehran during protests after a young Kurdish woman died while in police custody, according to state media reports from September. The arrest was for “inciting riots.”
Since the 1979 revolution, the demonstrations have presented one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s clerical leadership.
“Following the arrest of Ms. Faezeh Hashemi, she was sentenced to five years in prison but the sentence is not final,” defence lawyer Neda Shams wrote on her Twitter account.
In 2012, Faezeh Hashemi was sentenced to jail and banned from political activities for “anti state propaganda” dating back to the 2009 disputed presidential election.
Her father died in 2017.
Former president Rafsanjani’s pragmatic policies of economic liberalisation and better relations with the West attracted fierce supporters and equally fierce critics during his life. He was one of the founders of the Islamic Republic.
Fights broke out between protesters and pro-regime Iranians at the country’s second World Cup game on Friday in Qatar.
Others reported they were screamed at and harassed, while several demonstrating supporters claimed their flags were taken away.
Additionally, stadium security officers confiscated items including anti-government T-shirts and other items.
Iran has had widespread protests since the passing of Mahsa Amini,22, in September.
Ms Amini was arrested in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly not covering her hair properly and died in police custody three days later. The demonstrations spread across the country with people demanding changes such as more freedoms or an overthrow of the state, and the government has responded with a deadly crackdown.
On Friday – at Iran’s World Cup game against Wales – some protesters had Persian pre-revolutionary flags snatched from them by pro-government fans at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium.
Insults were also reportedly hurled at some people wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “woman, life, freedom” – a phrase that has become a rallying cry among protesters against Iran’s authorities.
One Iranian spectator alleged that Qatari policeordered her to wash off the names of protesters killed by Iran’s security forces from her arms and chest after pro-government fans complained.
Another woman said she was prevented from wearing a T-shirt with Ms Amini’s face in the stadium.
Women giving interviews to foreign press about the protests were also seen being harried by at least one group of men.
Some used their mobiles to film the women who were also subjected to verbal attacks and the men loudly chanting: “The Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The match itself, which Iran won 2-0 against Wales, saw Iranian players booed and whistled at as they sang the country’s national anthem before kick-off.
At their earlier game against England on Monday, the players remained silent during the anthem in an apparent expression of support for anti-government protests.
Some fans in the stadium wore hats with the name of a former Iranian football player, Voria Ghafouri, written on them.
A critic of Iran’s government, he was arrested in Iran on Thursday and reportedly taken away by authorities after being accused of spreading propaganda.
Capped 28 times for his country, Mr Ghafouri was part of Iran’s 2018 World Cup team and his absence from the 2022 squad surprised many.
The Iranian-Kurdish player has been a high-profile voice defending Iranian Kurds within the country.
Earlier this week, the UN Human Rights Council voted to set up a fact-finding mission to investigate the crackdown on the anti-government protests in Iran.
The UN said Iran was in a “full-fledged” crisis and more than 300 people had been killed and 14,000 others arrested over the past nine weeks.
Armed police officersare stationed in a tree-lined business park in Chiswick, West London. Jankels, black, multi-role armoured vehicles, are stationed at regular intervals alongside Met Police armed response vehicles, which are fully crewed with armed officers inside.
They are stationed at every entrance to the plate-glass structure that houses the offices of Iran International, an independent Farsi-language news channel that has enraged Iran’s regime.
“This has to be the biggest armed police operation around a commercial building in this country that I can think of,” says a spokesman for Iran International.
It is certainly reminiscent of Tony Blair’s deployment of armoured vehicles to Heathrow in February 2003 in response to a perceived terror threat.
Founded in 2017 by a former BBC Persian journalist, Iran International broadcasts into Iran by satellite. It has been providing 24-hour rolling news coverage of the huge street protests that have engulfed Iran since the death in police custody of 22-year old Mahsa Amini, allegedly arrested for not wearing her hijab head covering correctly.
Many of the protests have been calling for an end to the oppressive rule of the Islamic Republic.
But instead of listening to people’s demands, the authorities in Iran have arrested thousands and accused Western nations and the free media they host of stirring up the protests and provoking unrest.
So far, so familiar. That has been the refrain each time protests in Iran have erupted, but this time it’s different.
Not only are the protests significantly more widespread, but the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the real power behind the regime, has been targeting Iranian opposition journalists based in Britain.
“Iran projects threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence services,” says Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, the UK security service.
“At its sharpest, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime. We have seen at least 10 such potential threats since January alone.”
The Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has called on Iran to stop its intimidation of UK-based journalists. Iran has called the accusations “ridiculous”.
Working closely with MI5, the Metropolitan Police has responded to the threats with a large show of force to protect the 100 or so employees of Iran International in Chiswick, some of whom have personally received death threats.
“The Met Police have been outstanding”, the Iran International spokesman tells me as we sit in an office next to their newsroom. “Their response has been swift and effective.”
So what form do these threats take exactly?
Initially they were just text messages, sent to the mobile phones of journalists, often warning them that if they don’t stop their critical coverage of the regime then their families and relatives in Iran will suffer.
That apparently has been going on for years, targeting not just Iran International but BBC Persian as well, to the point where Iran’s behaviour has been raised at the UN.
But this year Iran has gone further.
It seems that planning discussions of actual attacks have been intercepted by UK intelligence. There has also been hostile surveillance spotted outside both the offices of Iran International and the homes of some of its staff.
“We’re talking here about low-grade Tier 3 operatives being hired and directed by Tier 1 operatives,” says the Iran International spokesman.
“They are easily recruited from drug gangs or from the fringes of an Islamic centre.”
The hostile surveillance has not always been that sophisticated, he says. One example he gives is of two men and a woman wheeling a pram up and down outside the building on a cold evening while taking photographs – at 11pm.
“Who takes a baby in a pram for a walk at that time of night?”
There have also been attempts to interfere, unsuccessfully, with Iran International’s satellite broadcasts, as well as the usual cyber activity.
He shows me a text from an employee who has just been alerted to attempts to hack into his Twitter account. Then, abruptly, our meeting ends.
“I’ve got two CTSAs (counter terrorism security advisers) coming in from the Met to discuss what more still needs to be done,” he tells me.
Ali Larijani, a close advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a former speaker of parliament, is the first prominent politician to publicly demand that the government reconsider its harsh punishment of women and girls who do not dress according to the Islamic dress code.
A senior Iranian official has questioned excessive state enforcement of the country’s compulsory hijab laws – following the death of Mahsa Amini in custody.
Ali Larijani, 65, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and a former parliamentary speaker, warned in an interview with the Iranian daily Ettela’at that a “rigid response” to the widespread protests that have followed her death “is not the cure”.
The 22-year-old died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police last month after being detained for alleged violations of the country’s strict dress code.
Mr Larijani is the first senior political figure to publicly call for a rethink on the government’s crackdown on women and girls who do not adhere to the Islamic dress code.
In an apparent break from the uncompromising line shown by the regime, he said in the interview: “The hijab has a cultural solution, it does not need decrees and referendums.
“I appreciate the services of the police force and Basij [parliamentary militia], but this burden of encouraging the hijab should not be assigned to them.
“Do not doubt that when a cultural phenomenon becomes widespread, a rigid response to it is not the cure.
“The people and young people who come to the street are our own children. In a family, if a child commits a crime, then they try to guide him to the right path, the society needs more tolerance.”
He noted that during the period of the last Shah’s rule before the 1979 Iranian revolution, wearing of the hijab was not encouraged by the state but many women wore it voluntarily.
Mr Larijani continued: “Islamic government means that people manage their own affairs. It is the same in terms of social justice. If the affairs are managed by the people, their talents will flourish.”
He added: “The problem is that if in a society, young people do not implement one of the sharia rulings correctly from an intellectual and social point of view, this is not 100% wrong.”
Ms Amini, an Iranian Kurd, was arrested in Tehran on 13 September for wearing “inappropriate attire” and died three days later.
Her death has led young women to cut their hair and defiantly tear off and wave their headscarves, spearheading protests which have quickly spread nationwide – and to other cities across the globe, including London.
The protests, which have called for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, have been met by a harsh government crackdown, including beatings, arrests and the killing of demonstrators.
Human rights groups say at least 201 people have been killed in Iran, along with hundreds injured and thousands arrested by security forces.
At least 20 members of the security forces have reportedly been killed.
