The son of a leader of Iran’s opposition Green movement was arrested on Monday, Reuters reported, citing the Iranian Sahamnews website.
Hossein Karoubi, son of Mehdi Karoubi, was arrested two days after his father called on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to step down over the handling of the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner.
The elder Karoubi has been under house arrest since 2011. He and fellow opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi were reformist candidates during the 2009 presidential election, and questioned the shock victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which led to mass protests.
A year later, in 2010, government forces firebombed the five-story Tehran home of Karoubi, and beat his bodyguard into unconsciousness.
In 2011, both leaders ended up under house arrest for their part in the protests, which regime leaders called “the sedition”.
This is not the first time that Hossein Karoubi has been arrested. In 2017, he was sentenced to six months in prison over “propaganda against the regime”, after he published a letter his father sent to President Hassan Rouhani.
His arrest on Monday comes as Iranians continue to protest against the regime over the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane last week. Footage from the protests shows the Iranian Revolutionary Guards firing at demonstrators.
The protests began on Saturday after the military admitted it shot down the civilian Ukrainian plane.
The protests continued on Sunday as the protesters were seen avoiding giant Israeli and American flags on the ground during their demonstration, so as to not trample them.