A court in Iran has sentenced the outspoken daughter of late former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to five years in prison, her lawyer says.

Faezeh Hashemi, 60, a women's rights activist and former MP, was arrested in September after encouraging Iranians to take part in anti-government protests.

She was accused of "inciting rioters".

Her lawyer Neda Shams tweeted on Monday evening that she was sentenced "on the declared charges at the initial stage", without providing further details.

"It's not right to comment on it considering that the current verdict is not final. The client is still in prison and there are other cases against her," she added.

Hashemi, a prominent critic of the clerical establishment and the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), has been imprisoned several times.

She served six months in 2012 after being convicted of "propaganda against the system" in connection to her support for the mass protests that erupted following a disputed presidential election three years earlier.

She was handed another six-month sentence in 2017 for "spreading lies against the judiciary".

Last July, Tehran's prosecutor announced that Hashemi had been charged with "propaganda against the system" and "uttering blasphemies".

It came after she argued against the removal of the IRGC from Western sanctions lists and was accused by a newspaper of associating with members of the persecuted Bahai religious minority and insulting the third Shia Muslim Imam.

Hashemi's father was one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic.

He served as president between 1989 and 1997 and remained a powerful figure until his death in 2017. He was considered as a conservative pragmatist who tried to improve relations with the West.

Hashemi is one of the thousands of people arrested in connection with the current protests against the clerical establishment, which erupted four months ago following the death in custody of a young woman detained by morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab, or headscarf, "improperly".

Authorities have portrayed them as "riots" and responded with lethal force.

So far, at least 519 protesters have been killed, according to the Human Rights Activists' News Agency (HRANA). Four others have been executed after what the UN has condemned as "unfair trials based on forced confessions".

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by David Gritten

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