Iranian authorities have arrested the niece of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for denouncing the repression of the protest movement in Iran and calling the government a “murderous regime”, her brother said on Saturday.
Known for her activism against the death penalty in Iran, Farideh Moradkhani is the daughter of Ali Khamenei’s sister, who fled with her family in the 1980s to Iraq. His father who died in October, Sheikh Ali Tehrani, was an opponent of the Shah of Iran before becoming a critic of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Farideh Moradkhani was arrested on Wednesday after being summoned to the prosecutor’s office, her brother Mahmoud Moradkhani wrote on Twitter.
He shared on YouTube a video of his sister condemning the “obvious oppression” suffered by Iranians and denouncing the inaction of the international community.
“Free peoples, stand with us! Tell your governments to no longer support this murderous and infanticidal regime,” said Farideh Moradkhani. “This regime is not faithful to its religious principles and only knows how to govern by force to stay in power,” she accuses.
It is not specified when this video was filmed.
The Supreme Leader’s niece was already arrested in early 2022 after greeting Farah Diba, the widow of the Shah overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The US-based NGO Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) confirmed Ms. Moradkhani’s arrest, saying she faces 15 years in prison, without specifying the charges against her.
Iran is rocked by a protest movement sparked on September 16 by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died after her arrest by vice police in Tehran for breaking a strict dress code for women in Iran.
The authorities denounce these protests as “riots” encouraged according to them by the West.
More than 14,000 people have been arrested since the beginning of the movement according to the UN.
At least 416 people have been killed in the repression, according to a latest report from the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Norway: 290 during protests against the death of Mahsa Amini and 126 in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan ( south-east) including more than 90 on September 30 in the provincial capital Zahedan, during demonstrations against the rape of a teenager attributed to a police officer.