"Child-killer regime" Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei's niece denounces his government
The Iranian authorities have arrested Farida Moradkhani, the niece of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, after she recorded a video describing the authorities as a "criminal and a child- killing regime". She posted the video as a comment on the government's violent crackdown on protesters.
Moradkhani's brother Mahmoud explained on Twitter that she was arrested last Wednesday as she was heeding a court order to appear at the Tehran prosecutor's office. He shared the video clip on social media.
"O free people, be with us and tell your governments to stop supporting this murderous and child-killing regime," said Moradkhani in the video. "This regime is not loyal to any of its religious principles and does not know any rules except force and maintaining power."
Khamenei's niece has slammed the sanctions imposed on the Iranian regime for its violent crackdown on protesters as a "laughable" gesture. She argued that Iranians have been left on their own in their struggle for freedom.
Farida Moradkhani is the daughter of Khamenei's sister Badri, who fell out with her family in the 1980s and fled to Iraq at the height of the war between the two countries. She joined her husband, opposition cleric Ali Moradkhani Arangeh, in Iraq.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, about 14,000 people have been arrested in connection with the protests which erupted in September over the death of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran's so-called morality police. At least 416 people, including 51 children, have been killed in the regime's crackdown, the Norway-based Human Rights Organisation in Iran has reported.