"In Iran I am persecuted because I am a Christian. That is why I fled." Mahdi Rahimian, 40, dual Iranian and Dutch citizen, said this this morning before the judges of the Court of Appeal of Sassari called to decide on the extradition request presented by the Tehran regime, after the arrest carried out by the Italian authorities at dawn on Friday in a farmhouse on the Costa Smeralda, where the political refugee had just arrived to spend a holiday with his wife and children . The accusation, generic: fraud against the Islamic Republic.

In reality, Rahiman would have been responsible for helping some of his fellow countrymen to leave Iran, where they were risking their lives. Like him, when he fled about twenty years ago. For that support, he declared, he never received any money.

The “crime” charged by the regime would have been committed during his stay in Holland, a country that gave him official citizenship precisely to offer him protection. As confirmed by the documents provided by the Amsterdam embassy in Italy and produced at the hearing. There the request for arrest was always rejected. Immediately accepted, however, when the Iranian - entrepreneur in the telephone sector - set foot in Italy. In the country that with many apologies he accompanied to Libya, on a state plane, Njeem Osama, known as Al Masri (“the Egyptian”), accused by the International Criminal Court of crimes such as war crimes of murder, torture and cruel treatment, outrages on personal dignity, rape, sexual violence and sexual slavery.

Lawyers Alberto Sechi and Danilo Mattana argued that the extradition request was completely unfounded. This position was also shared by the Attorney General, represented by Gabriella Pintus, who also questioned the legitimacy of the validation of the arrest carried out in Sardinia.

The Court of Appeal has declared its jurisdiction to decide the fate of Mahdi Rahimian.

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