Sister of Iran's supreme leader denounces her brother's 'despotic' regime

The sister of Iran's supreme leader reportedly said that she hopes the "tyranny" of her brother, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will soon be overthrown as she called on the country's revolutionary guards to lay down their arms.

"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 regime," Badri Hosseini Khamenei's France-based son Mahmoud Moradkhani shared in a letter as saying attributed to his mother.

"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," it added,

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Iran's Islamic regime faces dissent from the supreme leader's own family. Badri's family have been fierce critics of her brother's regime and its predecessors since the 1979 revolution overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

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Her husband, Ali Tehrani, was a prominent dissident and cleric who she followed into exile during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When the pair returned to Iran in 1995 he was jailed for 10 years. Tehrani died in October this year.

"Our family’s opposition and struggle against this criminal system began a few months after the (1979) revolution,"the letter read.

"The crimes of this system, the suppression of any dissenting voice, the imprisonment of the most educated and the most caring youth of this land, the most severe punishments, and the large-scale executions began from the very beginning."

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The letter condemned the authorities’ crackdown on the nationwide protests that have rocked Iran for almost the past three months since the custodial death of a 22-year-old Mahsa Al-Amini.

"I am sorry that due to physical ailments, I cannot participate in protest movements as I should. But in heart and soul, I am with the people of Iran,"it read further.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's sister still lives in Iran. Her daughter, Farideh Moradkhani, a prominent activist, was arrested in November after calling on foreign governments to cut all ties with Tehran. She had already been arrested for her activism on two occasions before the latest protest movement.

Human rights groups have put the number of people killed since the protests began in Iran at more than 450. On Wednesday, five people were sentenced to death by hanging for killing a member of the Basij paramilitary force.

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