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.
Aged 62, Jafar Panahi, one of Iran's most awarded filmmakers, "was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison (…) and was taken to 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 Circle", and the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with "Three Faces", three years after the Golden Bear in Berlin for "Taxi Tehran ".
Dissident artist Jafar Panahi was arrested and then sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and a twenty-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.
Many arrests in recent weeks
On July 11, Jafar 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.
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.
Mostafa 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,” Massoud Sétayechi said on Tuesday.
Former deputy minister under the government of reformer Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and aged 65, Mostafa 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 defending freedom of expression in their country", citing a phenomenon illustrating "the worrying deterioration of situation of artists in Iran”.
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