TEHRAN: Iran’s official news agency says authorities have detained the daughter of influential ex-president and political centrist Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The Sunday report by IRNA says Tehran’s judiciary department took Faezeh Hashemi into custody late Saturday to serve a six-month sentence on charges of making propaganda against the ruling system.
Earlier this year a court convicted her and banned her from political activity for five years. Her lawyer said the accusations were related to interviews she gave to news websites.
Since the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, in which Rafsanjani supported Ahmadinejad’s reformist challenger, his family has come under pressure from hard-liners.
In recent months, there are indications that the 78-year-old former president, who favors a more moderated approach to the West, may be making a political comeback.
Iran detains centrist ex-president’s daughter
Iran detains centrist ex-president’s daughter
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
