Son of former Iran president Rafsanjani gets 15 years jail

The son of Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for security offences and financial crimes, state media said on Sunday.

Mehdi Hashemi was accused of involvement in massive protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election in 2009. After being threatened with arrest, he left for Britain.

Hashemi, who is in his 40s, was arrested after returning to Tehran in September 2012, and although initially bailed out three months later, he was rearrested and put on trial.

His conviction relates to national security matters as well as fraud and embezzlement, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejeie was quoted as saying in state media.

Hashemi has 20 days to appeal his conviction, the reports said.

The 15-year jail term, if confirmed by a secondary court, would be one of the heaviest ever handed down to a family member of such a high-ranking official.

In 2009, Hashemi supported the so-called Green Movement led by the defeated reformist candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, after the presidential election was officially won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The former president’s son, most commonly described as a businessman, actively supported Mousavi, dismissing Ahmadinejad’s win as fraudulent.

Mousavi, along with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and Karroubi were placed under house arrest in 2011 after repeatedly challenging election results, which gave Ahmadinejad a second term as president.

Mousavi and Karroubi are accused of “sedition” against the government, and their most ardent opponents have said that the two men should face the death penalty.

Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989 to 1997 and is now considered a moderate, is close to the reformist camp in Iranian politics.

In 2009, he became the bane of conservatives who have publicly echoed the doubts of some Iranians on the fairness of the election and criticised the repression and deadly crackdown by the government that followed.