A niece of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on foreign governments to cut all links with Tehran’s “murderous and child-killing” regime in a video posted online two days after she was arrested.
The video of a statement by Farideh Moradkhani, a well-known rights activist, has been circulating online after it was shared by her France-based brother Mahmoud Moradkhani on Friday. Mahmoud Moradkhani said his sister had been arrested on Wednesday after going to a prosecutor’s office following a summons.
In the video Farideh Moradkhani condemned the “clear and obvious oppression” Iranians have been subjected to, and criticised the international community’s inaction.
“This regime is not loyal to any of its religious principles and does not know any law or rule except force and maintaining its power in any way possible,” she said in the video. She complained that the sanctions imposed against the regime over its crackdown were “laughable” and said Iranians had been left “alone” in their fight for freedom. It was not clear when the video had been recorded.
Farideh Moradkhani is an engineer who comes from a branch of Ayatollah Khamenei’s family that has a record of opposition to Iran’s clerical leadership, and has been jailed previously in the country.
Iran has been shaken by more than 10 weeks of protests that have spread across the country after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by the morality police for supposedly wearing her hijab inappropriately. The Iranian authorities said their inquiry showed she died from natural causes due to a pre-existing condition, but her family allege she was beaten.
The protests against the clerical establishment have grown into a broad movement to challenge the theocracy that has ruled Iran since 1979.
On Sunday judicial authorities confirmed that the Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi, 38, who had expressed support for anti-regime protests has been charged with “corruption on earth” and could face the death penalty.
A US-based rights group had tweeted on Saturday that his trial had begun “without a lawyer of his choice”, and his family said his “life is at serious risk”.
Assadollah Jafari, judicial chief in the central province, said the trial had not yet begun “but the charge against Toomaj Salehi has been drafted and sent back” to the court in Isfahan, according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.
Salehi is charged with “corruption on earth”, according to the judiciary, one of the Islamic republic’s most serious offences.
He is also accused of spreading “lies on the internet, propaganda against the state, of having formed and managed illegal groups with the aim of disrupting security in cooperation with a government hostile” to Iran, and of inciting people to violence.
Iran’s judiciary said more than 2,000 people have been charged since the start of the protests.
Salehi is among a number of prominent figures who have been detained.
Iranian authorities said that Hossein Ronaghi, another prominent detainee, has been released on bail in a government act of reconciliation after Iran’s World Cup victory over Wales.
Ronaghi, who has been a human rights defender, blogger and advocate of a free Iran for nearly a decade, was arrested on 24 September outside Evin court house at the start of the protests. He was released temporarily, his brother announced on Twitter. He has spent a total of six years in prison since 2009 and recently had been suffering kidney problems inside jail.
It was also reported but not confirmed that the former captain of Esteghlal club and a popular current player for Khuzestan club, Voria Ghafouri, will be released. His arrest last week for allegedly insulting the national football team had provoked an outcry among fellow footballers. A Kurd, he has insisted he is not a separatist, but has sided with some of the protesters by meeting victims.
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of the judiciary had announced the amnesty in what may have been an attempt to capitalise on the mood of national excitement in the victory over Wales. In Tehran alone, 48 prisoners were due to be released.
Moradkhani is the daughter of Khamenei’s sister Badri, who fell out with her family in the 1980s and fled to Iraq at the peak of the war with Iran’s neighbour. She joined her husband, the dissident cleric Ali Tehrani who was born Ali Moradkhani Arangeh.
She has gained prominence as an anti-death penalty activist and was last arrested in January this year. That arrest came after an October 2021 video conference in which she lavishly praised Farah Diba, the widow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency said this weekend that 450 protesters had been killed during more than two months of nationwide unrest, including 63 minors. It said 60 members of the security forces had been killed, and 18,173 protesters detained.
On Thursday, the United Nations top human rights body voted overwhelmingly to set up a fact-finding investigation into human rights abuses in Iran during the violent security crackdown on the anti-government protests.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
