Iran has sentenced award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi to five years and one month in prison and ordered the seizure of of all of his assets.
The “It Was Just an Accident” director was sentenced Monday, according to the Associated Press. The charges against Panahi, who’d returned to the country in March, remain unclear, per the outlet.
One of Iran’s most politically outspoken filmmakers, Panahi has been critical of the country’s leadership and condemned violence against anti-government protesters. He has previously been convicted of “propaganda activities against the system” and has repeatedly been imprisoned, banned from traveling and put under house arrest by Iranian authorities over the years.
Panahi filmed the Palme d’Or-winning “It Was Just an Accident” clandestinely in Iran following his release from a seven-month stint in prison in 2023 after he declared a hunger strike.
“I felt a huge burden on my shoulders when I left prison that made me feel I owed something to my fellow prisoners who were left behind,” Panahi told The Envelope earlier this year.
Panahi was detained by Iranian authorities in 2022 after inquiring about the arrests of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad. Authorities then reimposed a six-year prison sentence that had never been enforced stemming from a 2010 conviction related to a documentary he was making about the disputed reelection of Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the protests that followed.
“This arrest was more like banditry and hostage-taking than the execution of a judicial sentence,” Panahi said in a statement from Tehran’s Evin Prison at the time.
Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, told Iranian news site Emtedad that the filmmaker was currently involved in three open legal cases but had not been notified of the hearing date for the latest one, according to a report by the Guardian. Nili also said that the court imposed a two-year travel ban and has barred Panahi from using social media for two years.
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