SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A sister of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has condemned his crackdown on nationwide protests and called on the widely-feared Revolutionary Guards to lay down their weapons, according to a letter published by her France-based son.
The nationwide protests, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, on Sept. 16 in the custody of the so-called morality police for allegedly violating the country’s Islamic female dress code, posing one of the boldest challenges to the rulers there since the 1979 revolution.
Badri Hosseini Khamenei, who lives in Iran and is the sister of Ayatollah Khamenei, criticised the clerical establishment starting from the time of the Islamic Republic’s late founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to her brother’s rule, the letter, dated “December 2022”, said.
“I think it is appropriate now to declare that I oppose my brother’s actions and I express my sympathy with all mothers mourning the crimes of the Islamic Republic, from the time of Khomeini to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei,” she wrote in the letter which was shared on Wednesday on the Twitter account of her son, Mahmoud Moradkhani.
“Ali Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guards and mercenaries should lay down their weapons as soon as possible and join the people before it is too late,” the letter said.
(Esta Media Network/Reuters)
