Iranian filmmaker and opponent Jafar Panahi, who was arrested last week in Tehran, must serve a six-year sentence according to a verdict issued in 2010, the Judiciary announced on Tuesday. 62-year-old Mr. 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. 2000 in Venice for Le Cercle and the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with Trois Visages, three 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. “Worrying deterioration of the situation of artists in Iran”. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic. Detained for two months in 2010, he was living under a conditional release regime that could be revoked at any time. , Mohammad Rasoulof, detained since July 8 with his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad. 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 that of 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. Sétayechi said on Tuesday. 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. On Friday, France called for the “immediate release” of Iranian filmmakers and “other Iranian personalities committed to the defense of freedom of expression in their country”, reporting a phenomenon illustrating “the worrying deterioration of the situation of artists in Iran”.
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