Judged Incitement During Protests, Daughter of Former Iranian President Rafsanjani Jailed for Five Years

The late Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani. (Wikimedia Commons/Tasnim News Agency/Gregant your body, rest, rest with your heart, rest with your heart.)

JAKARTA - Iranian activist and daughter of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been sentenced to five years in prison, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Lawyers did not elaborate on the charges against Faezeh Hashemi. However, Tehran's public prosecutor indicted Hashemi last year on charges of "propaganda against the system", according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.

State media reported in September that Faezeh had been arrested for "inciting riots" in Tehran during protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman in the custody of the moral police.

"Following the arrest of Faezeh Hashemi, he has been sentenced to five years in prison, but the sentence is not final", his lawyer Neda Shams wrote on Twitter, reported Reuters January 10.

Shams further said the 60-year-old former lawmaker and women's rights activist was charged with "collusion against national security, propaganda against the Islamic Republic and disturbing public order by participating in an illegal gathering", Al Arabiya quoted AFP as saying.

"The decision, which is not final, was communicated to me on Wednesday, and we will appeal it within the time allowed by law", Shams added.

Much earlier, Faezeh Hashemi was sentenced to prison and banned from political activities in 2012, for "anti-state propaganda" since the disputed 2009 presidential election.

It is known that Rafsanjani served as President of Iran from 1989 to 1997. Died in 2017, the late Rafsanjani was one of the founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Former president Rafsanjani's pragmatic policies of economic liberalization and better relations with the West attracted fierce supporters and equally fierce criticism during his lifetime.