By Karen Townsend
The niece of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Farideh Moradkhani, was arrested last Wednesday, according to her brother. Her brother uploaded a video on Saturday of Farideh describing the men around her uncle as a “murderous and child-killing regime.”
Farideh is the daughter of the Ayatollah’s sister, Badri, who fled to Iraq in the 1980s at the peak of the war with Iran. Her husband is a dissident cleric, Ali Tehrani. Farideh has a history of opposing Iran’s clerical leaders and she has been jailed previously in Iran. Farideh’s brother, Mahmoud Moradkhani tweeted that she had been arrested on Wednesday after going to the office of the prosecutor following a summons.
Surely she must have known a summons wasn’t a good thing, yet she went. Did she deliberately want to be detained to protest the regime?
She was arrested last January. She is a prominent anti-death activist.
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.
Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said she was released on bail in April and her arrest last Wednesday was to begin serving an existing 15-year sentence.
The charges were not immediately clear.
Yashar Ali 🐘 یاشار on Twitter: “NEWSFarideh Moradkhani, the niece of Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, calls on international community to support Iranians.She compares her uncle to Hitler and Mussolini.She says Iranians will overthrow the Islamic Republic.Her uncle has had her arrested in the past. pic.twitter.com/htjyBsnMc7 / Twitter”
NEWSFarideh Moradkhani, the niece of Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, calls on international community to support Iranians.She compares her uncle to Hitler and Mussolini.She says Iranians will overthrow the Islamic Republic.Her uncle has had her arrested in the past. pic.twitter.com/htjyBsnMc7
In the video she condemned the “clear and obvious oppression” Iranians have been subjected to. She goes farther to criticize the international community’s inaction. She tells other countries to stop supporting the Iranian regime.
“Free people, be with us! Tell your governments to stop supporting this murderous and child-killing regime,” she said.
“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 that sanctions against Iran are “laughable” and Iranians have been left alone to fight for their freedom.
