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.
Source: Aljazeera.com