Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, has criticized his daughter’s meeting with one of the leaders of the Bahai community.
Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an interview with Jomhouri-ye Eslami newspaper: “Faezeh made a serious mistake and must correct and compensate for it”.
The publication of a photo of Ms. Hashemi meeting with Fariba Kamalabadi, one of the leaders of the Bahai community who was on leave from prison for the first time in the past eight years, prompted severe criticism from media outlets and conservative figures.
However, Faezeh Hashemi responded to these criticisms by telling Euronews: “I have done nothing wrong and I am not sorry”.
Nevertheless, her father told Jomhouri-ye Eslami newspaper that Bahaism is “a deviant sect created by colonialism that has always been known by this deviation and we have always disassociated ourselves from and sought to distance ourselves from this sect”.
Read more: Reactions to Faezeh Hashemi’s meeting with Bahai community leader
In recent days, in addition to Faezeh Hashemi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Sajadeh Arab-Sarkhi, and several other political prisoners who were previously cellmates of Ms. Kamalabadi have visited her.
Fariba Kamalabadi is one of seven leaders of the Bahai community who have each been sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of espionage, insulting religious sanctities, and propaganda against the Islamic Republic system.
The global Bahai community and the families of these seven individuals have called these charges baseless.
The U.S. State Department also issued a statement on Saturday, May 14, condemning the continued imprisonment of Bahai community leaders in Iran and calling on Islamic Republic officials to release these individuals as soon as possible along with other political prisoners.
