He will not be able to expatriate and will have to report to the Carabinieri in Arzachena, but Mahdi Rahimian, the 40-year-old Iranian entrepreneur arrested Friday morning at dawn by the Digos agents of the Sassari police headquarters in execution of a warrant issued by the authorities of the Tehran regime on charges of fraud, is back free.
The Court of Appeal of Sassari, called to decide on the extradition to his country of origin, has decided: for now the entrepreneur, who was in a farmhouse for a holiday with his family, will remain in Sardinia, awaiting further acts of the proceeding.
During yesterday morning's hearing, Rahimian explained that he had obtained Dutch citizenship in 2018 and that he was a political refugee : he had fled his country because he was persecuted for his Christian faith. And for this reason he had been welcomed by the authorities in Amsterdam. The Netherlands never followed up on the Islamic Republic's pressure, while Italy proceeded with the arrest as soon as the forty-year-old set foot on the island.
Lawyer Alberto Sechi, who is defending the refugee with his colleague Danilo Mattana, announced that he intends to turn to the Government "to put an end to this farce: arrests should be carried out without even verifying citizenship and without communicating with European countries. It is unacceptable that no one knew he was a Dutch citizen."
