Iranian authorities have sentenced Mahsa Amini's uncle to more than five years in prison over anti-government views expressed during Iran's 2022 protests, human rights groups reported Tuesday.
Safa Aeli, 30, was sentenced to five years and four months in prison by the revolutionary court in the northwestern Iranian city of Saqez, where the family is from, officials said. Hengaw groups and Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Citing the family's lawyer, Me Saleh Nikbakht, the HRANA group however clarified that part of this sentence was suspended and that Safa Aeli should serve a total of three years and six months in prison.
Accused of insulting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Among the charges against him are participating in protests that disrupted internal security, spreading anti-government propaganda and insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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Safa Aeli is the uncle of Mahsa Amina, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd whose death in September 2022, three days after being arrested by the moral police for an ill-fitting veil, provoked a vast protest movement in Iran.
Her family and human rights activists maintain she was beaten to death, a claim Iranian officials deny.
Hundreds of deaths
Aeli was released on bail in October 2023, according to HRANA.
He had been arrested a month earlier, in September, shortly before the first anniversary of his niece's death.
The demonstrations, which had shaken the regime of the Islamic Republic for several weeks, have now calmed down in the face of a repression which led to the death of hundreds of people according to rights defense associations, and thousands of arrests, according to the UN.
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Nine men have already been executed in cases linked to the protests, according to human rights groups, and dozens of members of security forces killed according to Iranian authorities.