The body of the deceased Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had contained radioactive elements “10 times more than the allowed level”, his daughter Faezeh Hashemi has said.
In an interview with E’temed News Website, Hashemi added that her family has been informed about that fact during a meeting with several members of national security council. She did not mention when the meeting was held and who were the officials who attended it.
Hashemi's daughter also discloses in her interview that her sister, Fatemeh and her mother were tested for radiation. Her mother had three times the normal level and her sister had twice. She does not say when the tests took place, but most probably, it was after they learned about high levels of radiation in her father's body.
The members of national security council told the family that they did not know about the source of the radiation, however they had concluded that it was not the reason for the death of Ex-President Rafsanjani and therefore, the case had been closed, Faezeh Hashemi told E’temad.
Rafsanjani who had served as Iran’s president for two terms died on January 8, 2017. Regime officials announced heart failure as the cause for his death, but many of his supporters and some of his family members expressed serious doubts about it.
Rafsanjani’s children said that their father was very healthy and did not have any history of heart problems. Immediately after the death of the former president, Iran’s minister of health criticized the medical team for “shortcomings” in addressing the heart attack, and rumors circulated that Rafsanjani was in fact drowned in a pool. He died while taking his routine swimming exercise.
Under public pressure, the Iranian state TV interviewed the brother of the former president who claimed that Rafsanjani was not assassinated or drowned but died due to heart failure. He later slightly corrected himself by saying that the reason for the heart failure has not been determined yet.
In addition to his two terms as president, Rafsanjani headed the Expediency Council, a body which is intended to resolve disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council.
He was also the head of the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body that selects the supreme leader, Iran’s most powerful figure.
It is widly believed that Rafsanjani played a crucial role in installing Khamenei as supreme leader after the death of ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.
He was always at the center of power and an influential player.
But in 2009 Rafsanjani's relations with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei soured over his support for the opposition movement which rejected the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a state organized election fraud.
Rafsanjani's relations with Khamenei gradually worsened and both his son and Faezeh Hashemi were arrested on various charges of fraud and illegal activities.