(Tehran) Iranian filmmaker and opponent Jafar Panahi, arrested last week in Tehran, must serve a six-year sentence, according to a verdict issued in 2010, the Judicial Authority announced on Tuesday.
Updated yesterday at 6:41 p.m.
62-year-old Panahi, one of Iran’s most award-winning filmmakers, “was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison […] and was taken to the Evin detention center to serve his sentence,” justice spokesman Massoud Sétayechi told a press conference.
The filmmaker notably obtained a Golden Lion in 2000 in Venice for The circleand the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with Three Facesthree years after the Golden Bear in Berlin for Taxi Tehran.
A dissident artist, Mr. Panahi was arrested and then sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on directing or writing films, traveling or even speaking in the media. However, he continued to work and live in Iran.
He had been convicted of “propaganda against the regime”, after having supported the 2009 protest movement against the re-election of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic.
Detained for two months in 2010, he lived under a conditional release regime that could be revoked at any time.
On July 11, Mr. Panahi was arrested on his arrival at the Tehran prosecutor’s office to follow up on the case of another award-winning director, Mohammad Rasoulof, detained since July 8 with his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad.
Many arrests
The filmmakers had denounced, in mid-May, in an open letter, the arrest of several of their colleagues by the authorities and the repression against demonstrators in Iran.
In recent times, the Iranian authorities have carried out numerous arrests, including a figure of the reform movement, Mostafa Tajzadeh, arrested on July 8 in Tehran.
Mr. Tajzadeh “is currently in pre-trial detention in Evin” and “has been charged with gathering and collusion against state security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” Mr. Setayechi said on Tuesday.
Former deputy minister in the government of reformer Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and aged 65, Mr. Tajzadeh had run for president in 2021 as a “citizen, reformist” and “political prisoner for seven years” .
He was previously arrested in 2009 before being released in 2016 and has been campaigning for several years for “structural and democratic changes” within the Islamic Republic.
The United States, which has strained relations with Iran, condemned its “continued efforts to prevent the exercise of freedom of expression”.
“We urge the Iranian government to release all media professionals, activists and peaceful protesters it has arbitrarily detained,” a State Department spokesperson said.
France “reiterates its request for the immediate release” of Jafar Panahi “as it had done following his arbitrary arrest”, reacted Tuesday the spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs during an electronic press briefing.
Paris expresses its “concern at the multiplication of arrests of Iranian personalities committed to the defense of freedom of expression in their country” and calls for their release, she added.