Iranian officials arrest supreme leader Khamenei’s niece after she called for Iran’s boycott, compared uncle to Hitler

Farideh Moradkhani and Ali Khamenei.

Iranian authorities have arrested a niece of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after she recorded a video describing the authorities led by her uncle as a “murderous and child-killing regime”.

Farideh Moradkhani urged the global community to cut ties with Iran over the officials’ crackdown on protesters.

Her brother Mahmoud Moradkhani wrote on Twitter that she was arrested on Wednesday after going to the office of the prosecutor following a summons.

She comes from a branch of the family that has a record of opposition to Iran’s clerical leadership and has herself been jailed previously in the country.

In a video, Moradkhani who had been a critic of her uncle called on people to urge their governments to stop “supporting the Iranian regime.”

She also compared Khamenei to dictators like Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Fascist Italy’s Benito Mussolini as well as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

WATCH the video:

“The time has come for all the freedom-loving countries to recall all their representatives from Iran as a symbolic gesture, and expel the representatives and affiliates of this brutal regime from their countries, and in this way express solidarity with the freedom-loving people of Iran,” she added.

Moradkhani who had in the past been arrested ended her video statement with the protest slogan, ‘women, life, freedom.’

Her brother on Saturday uploaded the video statement on YouTube following her arrest. It was not clear when the video had been recorded.

Moradkhani is the daughter of Khamenei’s sister Badri who fell out with her family in the 1980s and fled to Iraq at the peak of the war with Iran’s neighbour.  She joined her husband, the dissident cleric Ali Tehrani who was born Ali Moradkhani Arangeh.

Also read: WATCH: How Iranians are ‘striking’ at the regime with time-tested ‘hartal’

She has gained prominence as an anti-death penalty activist and was last arrested in January this year.

That arrest came after an October 2021 video conference in which she lavishly praised Farah Diba, the widow of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said she had then been released on bail in April and her arrest last Wednesday was to begin serving an existing 15-year sentence.

With inputs from agencies

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