Activist daughter of former Iranian president jailed

Summary of story from The Guardian, January 3, 2012

Faezeh Hashemi, a political activist and former member of the Iranian parliament faces six months in prison for ‘spreading propaganda’.

Her lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, said that Tehran’s revolutionary court also banned Hashemi from belonging to any political parties and taking part in media or online activities for the next five years.

She has 20 days to appeal.

Ms Hashemi fell foul of the regime in 2009 when she publicly supported opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and later participated in popular protests against the disputed election’s results.

At the time, she was briefly arrested on two separate occasions and barred from leaving the country.

Her conviction is believed to be the result of an interview she gave to an opposition website, Roozonline, in which she blamed regime supporters for harassing her in public.

As the daughter of a leading politician, Ms Hashemi’s criticisms have caused an uproar as she is expected to follow the official line, not that of the opposition Green movement. The authorities refer to her reformist position as “sedition”.

Her father, Hashemi Rafsanjani, is head of Iran’s expediency council which mediates between the parliament and the guardian council, a body that vets all parliamentary legislation.

He has been increasingly sidelined since President Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, after a campaign led by the president accusing his family of financial corruption.

The sentencing comes amid growing political tension before parliamentary elections in March, the first general election in the country since 2009.