Mehdi Hashemi, son of former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Raf-sanjani, has been sentenced to 15 years for a combination of corruption and national security offenses, the chief prosecutor announced Sunday.
The harshness of the sentence surprised many and was taken as a swipe at Rafsanjani. Hashemi’s sentence was triple that handed down just a few weeks ago to Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, first vice president under President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad, who is now serving five years on corruption convictions.
The Tehran Revolutionary Court handed Hashemi sentences of seven, five and three years for two corruption convictions and one “security issue,” Gholam-Hossain Mohseni-Ejai said.
He did not explain specifically what any of the charges related to.
Hashemi, 45, has 20 days in which to appeal, which he is expected to do.
Hashemi was also handed a fine, ordered to return unspecified assets, and barred from holding political office, Mohseni-Ejai said.
A decade ago, Hashemi was named as the Iranian to whom Norway’s Statoil and French oil giant Total paid commissions to win access to Iran’s oil development programs. It isn’t known if that is behind one of the corruption charges.
But the regime showed no interest in pursuing that matter until after the 2009 presidential election, in which Hashemi acted as a major organizer for the opposition to Ahmadi-nejad. Hashemi swiftly fled Iran to “study” in Britain and only returned home in 2012, at which point he was arrested, detained for a short while and then told to await trial.
In 2012, the Judiciary jailed one of Rafsanjani’s daughters, Faezeh Hashemi, for remarks critical of the regime. She spent six months in a cell.
The Hashemis’ father is now the chairman of the Expediency Council and served two terms as president from 1989 to 1997.
