Iranian Judiciary Says Panahi Must Serve Six-year Sentence

In this file photo taken on August 30, 2010 Iranian film director Jafar Panahi on a balcony overlooking Tehran during an interview with AFP. (AFP)
In this file photo taken on August 30, 2010 Iranian film director Jafar Panahi on a balcony overlooking Tehran during an interview with AFP. (AFP)
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Iranian Judiciary Says Panahi Must Serve Six-year Sentence

In this file photo taken on August 30, 2010 Iranian film director Jafar Panahi on a balcony overlooking Tehran during an interview with AFP. (AFP)
In this file photo taken on August 30, 2010 Iranian film director Jafar Panahi on a balcony overlooking Tehran during an interview with AFP. (AFP)

Award-winning dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, arrested last week in Tehran, must serve a six-year sentence previously handed to him in 2010, the judicial authority announced Tuesday.

Panahi, 62, has won a number of awards at international festivals for films that have critiqued modern Iran, including the top prize in Berlin for "Taxi" in 2015, and best screenplay at Cannes for his film "Three Faces" in 2018.

He is the third director to be detained this month, alongside Mostafa Aleahmad and Mohammad Rasoulof, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020 with his film "There Is No Evil".

"Panahi had been sentenced in 2010 to a total of six years in prison... and therefore he was entered into Evin detention center to serve his sentence there", judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi told reporters, according to AFP.

He was arrested in 2010, following his support for anti-government demonstrations.

He was convicted of "propaganda against the system", sentenced to six years in jail, banned from directing or writing films and blocked from leaving the country.

But he served only two months in jail in 2010, and was subsequently living on conditional release that could be revoked at any time.

Panahi was arrested again on July 11 after he went to the prosecutor's office to follow up on the situation of Rasoulof.

The arrests come after Panahi and Rasoulof denounced in May the arrests of several colleagues in their homeland in an open letter.

Despite the political pressures, Iran has a thriving film industry and the country's products regularly win awards at major international festivals.

Panahi's detention has sparked condemnation from fellow filmmakers.

Cannes film festival organizers said they "strongly condemn" the arrests as well as "the wave of repression evidently under way in Iran against its artists".

The Venice film festival called for the "immediate release" of the directors, while the Berlin film festival said it was "dismayed and outraged" at the arrest.

France's foreign ministry on Friday expressed concern at the "arbitrary" arrests of the filmmakers, citing a "worrying deterioration in the situation of artists in Iran".



Iran Discloses New Details of Israeli Attempt to Assassinate Heads of Three Govt. Branches

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian meets with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, on Saturday evening (Iranian Presidency) 
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian meets with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, on Saturday evening (Iranian Presidency) 
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Iran Discloses New Details of Israeli Attempt to Assassinate Heads of Three Govt. Branches

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian meets with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, on Saturday evening (Iranian Presidency) 
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian meets with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, on Saturday evening (Iranian Presidency) 

The Fars news agency on Sunday disclosed new details of an assassination attempt that targeted a high-level meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council attended by heads of the three government branches and high-ranking officials during the 12-day war between Tehran and Tel Aviv.

Iran has launched a comprehensive investigation into the assassination attempt, and there is suspicion that an agent was involved, informed sources told the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated news agency.

Fars said that in the attack, “some officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, suffered minor injuries to their legs while leaving the meeting,” and added that they escaped through “an emergency hatch that had been planned in advance.”

The speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, were also said to have been in the meeting.

According to Fars, the attack occurred on Monday, June 16, at the lower levels of a secure government facility in western Tehran.

Fars said the attack was modeled after an Israeli plan to assassinate Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, involving the launch of six bombs or missiles aimed at entry and exit points to block evacuation routes and disrupt ventilation.

Following the explosions, power was cut to the targeted floor. However, Iranian officials reportedly managed to escape through a pre-designated emergency hatch.

In an interview last week with Tucker Carlson, the political commentator, Pezeshkian accused Israel of trying to assassinate him but did not admit to having being injured. “They did try, yes... They acted accordingly, but they failed,” he said.

Hours after the Fars news agency published its report, a spokesman of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council told the Nour News agency that “the Israeli attack on a secret meeting of the Council at a highly protected site, attended by heads of authorities and senior military and political leaders, set a dangerous precedent and sounded the alarm about the possibility of a security breach and the need to strengthen protection at the highest levels.”

“The attack is a dangerous threat to Iran not only in its timing and location, but also in the fact that it targeted one of the most secret and important meetings of the Iranian state,” the news agency wrote.

Vahid Jalili, the chief for cultural affairs and policy evolution at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and the brother of Saeed Jalili, Khamenei’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, was the first to speak about the attack.

He said the meeting of heads of the government branches on June16 was targeted by Israeli attacks just hours before the missile strike on the broadcasting building.

In a related development, the wife of Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ air force, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Iran during the 12-day war, said her husband received a phone call from his workplace, and headed there before he was killed.

In an interview with the Jamaran website, affiliated to the Khomeini Foundation, she said “Amir returned home from a ceremony, slept for about half an hour, before receiving the phone call.”

She added, “Our house was attacked after the dawn prayer.”