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Supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Twitter/@khamenei_ir
The sister of Iran’s supreme leader has slammed his “despotic” rule and thrown her support behind protests ignited by Mahsa Amini’s death, in a letter published Wednesday by her son.
The statement came days after her daughter was arrested for criticising Khamenei.
Protests have gripped Iran since Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died on September 16 after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.
Tehran says more than 200 people have been killed in the unrest, but Oslo-based non-governmental organisation Iran Human Rights says the country’s security forces have killed at least 458 protesters, including 63 children.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, has accused Iran’s arch enemy the United States and its allies of stoking the protests, which Tehran has sought to portray as “riots”.
Rights activists say the demonstrations were sparked by anger over the repression of women, before expanding to include other grievances.
“I oppose my brother’s actions,” Khamenei’s sister Badri Hosseini Khamenei, who is believed to be in Iran, said in a letter published online by her France-based son Mahmoud Moradkhani.
“I express my sympathy with all mothers mourning the crimes of the Islamic republic regime,” from the time of its founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei”, she wrote.
“My concern has always been and will always be the people, especially the women of Iran,” she added.
She accused the regime of bringing “nothing but suffering and oppression to Iran and Iranians” since it was established following the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the shah.
“The people of Iran deserve freedom and prosperity, and their uprising is legitimate and necessary to achieve their rights.
“I hope to see the victory of the people and the overthrow of this tyranny ruling Iran soon,” she said.
Badri Hosseini Khamenei called on the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to “lay down their weapons as soon as possible and join the people before it is too late”.
She lamented that “due to physical ailments” she was unable to take part in the protests.
“My brother does not listen to the voice of the people of Iran and wrongly considers the voice of his mercenaries and money-grabbers to be the voice of the Iranian people.
“He rightly deserves the disrespectful and impudent words he uses to describe the oppressed but brave people of Iran,” she wrote.
Khamenei niece’s arrested after comparing uncle to Hitler
On 27 November, Iranian authorities arrested Badri Hosseini Khamenei’s daughter Farideh Moradkhani after she recorded a video describing the authorities led by her uncle as a “murderous and child-killing regime”.
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.
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.
Khamenei’s sister Badri 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.
With inputs from agencies
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