Mehdi Hachémi, one of the sons of former Iranian President Akbar Hachémi Rafsanjani, has been released from prison after more than seven years of incarceration, local media announced on Wednesday (January 18th).
Now 53 years old, he was imprisoned on August 9, 2015 after being convicted of “fraud, embezzlement and fraud” and for matters related
to “national security
”.
Mehdi Hachémi had denounced a "
politically motivated
" judgment.
Conditional liberation
Quoting his lawyer Me Vahid Abolmaali, the Isna news agency announced that his client had been released in "
the last hours of Tuesday from Evin prison
" in Tehran where he was serving a ten-year sentence.
Read alsoIn Iran, a women's revolution is underway despite repression
The prosecutor's office in the capital had approved
the "conditional release
" of Mr. Hachémi on Tuesday, the Isna agency said.
Petroleum business
The name of Mehdi Hachémi was mentioned in the mid-2000s in cases involving the Norwegian public group Statoil and the French group Total, suspected of having paid bribes to obtain easier access to Iranian reserves of hydrocarbons.
He was then a senior official in the Iranian oil sector.
In 2009, Mehdi Hachémi had formed the “
vote protection committee
”, arousing the anger of the conservatives.
He actively supported the reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, who had rejected the ballot by denouncing massive fraud.
New conviction for the family
Mehdi's father, Akbar Hachémi Rafsanjani, president between 1989 and 1997, was a moderate who advocated improving ties with the West.
On January 9, 2023, the daughter of the former president, Faezeh, was sentenced to five years in prison, in particular for "
collusion against the security of the country
".
She was arrested on September 27 and imprisoned in Evin for having incited residents of Tehran to demonstrate in the context of the protest movement sparked in mid-September by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
