A legal case has been filed against Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, after she said in an interview that her father was assassinated for criticizing Iran’s leadership, ISNA reported on Wednesday.
The judiciary said the case was launched hours after the interview appeared online and that Hashemi has been summoned to court to explain her remarks.
In the interview, Hashemi alleged that her father, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic and a central figure in its early leadership, was deliberately killed because he had become a “thorn in the eye” of Iran’s rulers. She said he was removed for siding with the people and speaking out against the country’s direction.
Rafsanjani, who served as president from 1989 to 1997, died in January 2017 while swimming at a government facility in Tehran. Authorities said at the time that he had suffered a heart attack, but members of his family have repeatedly voiced doubts about that explanation. They have cited missing CCTV footage, the disappearance of his diaries, and the lack of a post-mortem examination as reasons for their concern.
Rafsanjani was a powerful figure in Iran’s post-revolution politics and a key backer of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s rise to power in 1989. But the two men later fell out, particularly after the disputed 2009 election, when Rafsanjani supported opposition candidates and called for political openness. His children have said that pressures on him increased in his final years.
