Iran arrests daughter of ex-president Rafsanjani: Reports

TEHERAN (AFP) - The daughter of Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been arrested and jailed under a six-month sentence for "propaganda against the regime," the Teheran prosecutor's office said in a statement carried by official media on Sunday.

"Faezeh Hashemi was arrested on Saturday evening to serve her sentence," the statement read, according to the official IRNA news agency. The Fars news agency reported that she had been taken to Teheran's notorious Evin prison.

Ms Hashemi was among thousands arrested for taking part in protests that erupted after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was given a second term in a 2009 election amid claims by the opposition that the vote was rigged.

Although authorities released her, they last year put her on trial on charges of making anti-regime propaganda. She was found guilty but her sentence was not implemented until now. Her father is an influential cleric who served as president from 1989 to 1997 and who is seen as a moderate voice isolated by hardliners in Iran's regime.