An Iranian whistleblower who revealed damaging revelations concerning the speaker’s household in April has been sentenced to 2 years in jail for publishing false data, Iranian media reported on Wednesday.
In April, Vahid Ashtari revealed on Twitter that conservative speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s household had stocked up on child merchandise overseas whereas hundreds of thousands of Iranians struggled to make ends meet amid Western financial sanctions.
The hashtag #LayetteGate went viral on social media after photographs emerged of Ghalibaf’s spouse, daughter and son-in-law getting back from Turkey with suitcases full of garments for his unborn grandchild.
Many customers shared a 2017 video during which Ghalibaf known as for officers who store overseas as an alternative of supporting native merchandise to be censored.
Ghalibaf reportedly responded that he opposed his household’s journey, however alleged critics “informed tales about buying” to discredit Parliament.
Iranian media reported that Ashtari was sentenced to 2 years in jail for “publishing false data geared toward inflicting hurt to the general public”.
However judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi insisted that neither Ashtari’s newest conviction nor earlier ones had something to do together with his claims concerning the speaker of the parliament.
“The defendant confronted quite a few comparable proceedings in courtroom, most of which resulted in injunctions,” the judiciary stated in an earlier assertion in April.
