Iran sentences daughter of ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to prison

Rights activist Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani given five years although her lawyer says verdict not yet final

Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has been given a five-year jail term. AFP

Iran on Tuesday sentenced the daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to five years in prison, her lawyer has revealed.

Charges against Faezeh Hashemi, a human rights activist, are not yet known, but Iran’s public prosecutor indicted her on charges of "propaganda against the system", the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

“Following the arrest of Faezeh Hashemi, in her last case, she was sentenced to five years in prison at the initial stage and the sentence is not final,” her lawyer Nada Shams said on Twitter.

The charges against her are "not correct considering that the present verdict is not final", Ms Shams said of her client, who meantime remains in custody.

Ms Hashemi was sentenced to jail and banned from political activities in 2012, over what the regime alleged was “anti-state propaganda” dating back to the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Her father died in 2017.

Former president Rafsanjani’s pragmatic policies of economic liberalisation and improved relations with the West attracted fierce supporters and equally fierce critics during his time in power and beyond.

He was one of the founders of the Islamic Republic.

The country has been rocked by anti-government protests that erupted last September following the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

She was arrested after wearing her hijab "inappropriately".

The demonstrations have posed one of the biggest challenges to Iran's clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution.