Mojtaba Khamenei attended the funeral ceremony of Vahid Haghanian's brother

The incident was described at the time as a “political kidnapping” and ultimately led to Karroubi being placed under house arrest, where he remains to this day. In March 2012, Vahid Haghanian accompanied Farhad Daneshjou, the newly-appointed president of the Azad University, to an introductory ceremony at the university despite its founders’ objections to the former president’s expulsion. The BBC’s write-up of the controversial event noted that “influential members of the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei” had been present.