Iran to prosecute daughter of ex-president over controversial statements

The judiciary in Iran has announced that Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of the late former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is to be prosecuted for opposing the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the US terrorist list and insulting the Prophet of Islam.

According to judiciary spokesman Zabihollah Khodaian, the prosecutor general will summon Hashemi over the two charges.

President Rafsanjani, was known for advocating rapprochement with the West and the US before he died in 2017. His daughter used social media in mid-April to say that removing the Corps from America’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations would not be in Iran’s interest. In a video clip circulated on social media, she also said that Prophet Muhammad had wasted the money of his wife Khadija.

The official IRNA news agency reported that she had apologised on 23 April, claiming that she had been “joking” and never intended “to offend” anyone. She has a record of controversy. In 2012, she was sentenced to six months in prison on charges of spreading “propaganda” against the Islamic Republic.

Tehran has demanded that Washington should remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the list of terrorist groups as part of the talks in Vienna to relaunch the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal. The US was withdrawn from the deal unilaterally by Donald Trump in 2018.

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