Ex-Iran president’s daughter faces trial over social media comments

According to the judiciary, the daughter of former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faces prosecution for social media comments about the Revolutionary Guards and the Prophet Mohammed.

Faezeh Hashemi, 59, has been “summoned by the prosecutor over these two affairs,” according to judiciary spokesman Zabihollah Khodayian, as quoted by the service’s Mizan Online website.

Khodayian referred to “remarks by Faezeh Hashemi on sanctions against revolutionary institutions and the insult against the Prophet”.

Hashemi, a former lawmaker and a women’s rights activist, contended in mid-April during an audio debate on a social media forum that Iran’s demand for the Guards to be removed from a US terror list was “damaging” to the country’s “national interests,” according to local media.

Removal of the terror designation is a key demand of Tehran in stalled negotiations over restoring its frayed 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

And in a video posted separately on social media, Hashemi said that Khadija, wife of the Prophet Mohammed, was “a businesswoman”, but added with a smile that he went on to “waste the money” of his wife.

It was “a joke… without any intention of causing insult”, she later pointed out, state news agency IRNA reported.

Hashemi’s late father was a centrist who advocated for better relations with the West and the United States.

In late 2012, Hashemi was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison on charges of “propaganda against the Islamic republic.”