After daughter, Iran arrests son of ex-president: report

TEHERAN (AFP) - The son of Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was arrested after he returned from abroad on Monday, two days after authorities jailed Rafsanjani's daughter, the official Irna news agency reported.

Mehdi Hashemi was apprehended after an hours-long interrogation by prosecutors after his arrival in Teheran from Dubai after a flight from Britain, where he had lived for the past three years. Iran had issued an arrest warrant for him in 2010.

On Saturday, Hashemi's sister Faezeh Hashemi was arrested and imprisoned to serve a six-month jail term for "propaganda against the regime." The sentence had been delivered early this year but not imposed until now.

Both Mehdi and Faezeh Hashemi were accused by authorities of involvement in 2009 street protests that erupted after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was given a second term in elections that the opposition said were marked by vote fraud.