Probe urged into Hashemi's corruption charges

Iran's prosecutor general has called for an investigation into corruption charges against the son of a high-ranking Iranian official.

Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran's Expediency Council, has been accused of money laundering and fact fabrication.

“If there are any charges against Mehdi Hashemi, he should be summoned and his case investigated,” Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i said in a Tuesday press conference.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a TV debate during his presidential campaign, accused the Rafsanjani family of corruption.

During the fourth round of the trial of the post-election detainees in August, one of the defendants accused Mehdi Hashemi of embezzling $2 million of the assets of the Iranian Fuel Conservation Organization — which was previously headed by him.

Hashemi, who is now in Britain, has categorically denied the accusations.

“If he [Hashemi] is found guilty, he should be punished without any mercy,” Eje'i said.

Meanwhile, Iran's prosecutor general dismissed as “fake” defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi's alleged “evidence” about the rape and murder of a young man and a teenage girl during the post-election unrest.

Contrary to the claims Saeideh Pouraqaei had been killed and buried in a Tehran cemetery, our investigations showed that she was alive, Eje'i said.

He said that a team of experts at Iran's judiciary investigated video footage provided by Karroubi in which a young man claimed he had been raped while in custody.

The experts and I had serious doubts about the man's remarks, but once we tried to have direct talks with him, Karroubi's website said the man had disappeared, he added.

“We later found somebody who had connections with the man and it was found out that he had neither taken part in protests nor had he been arrested,” Eje'i said.