عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

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)
TT
20
TT

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".

Most Viewed

 
World

Latest North Korean Ship Can Carry Dozens of Missiles, Analysts Say 

In this photo provided Thursday, March 27, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, center left in a black jacket, stands by what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone at an undisclosed location in North Korea, earlier this week. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
In this photo provided Thursday, March 27, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, center left in a black jacket, stands by what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone at an undisclosed location in North Korea, earlier this week. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
TT
20
TT

Latest North Korean Ship Can Carry Dozens of Missiles, Analysts Say 

In this photo provided Thursday, March 27, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, center left in a black jacket, stands by what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone at an undisclosed location in North Korea, earlier this week. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
In this photo provided Thursday, March 27, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, center left in a black jacket, stands by what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone at an undisclosed location in North Korea, earlier this week. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

North Korea's new class of warship can accommodate dozens of vertical launch cells to carry missiles its military has already developed, analysis of a satellite image showed, a step that would give its navy more punch and create an export opportunity.

Little is known about the unnamed class of ships being built in the Chongjin and Nampo shipyards. In December, South Korea's military said they would displace about 4,000 tons, somewhat less than half the size of a US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

Images captured of the ship in Nampo in the last week of March, however, show cavities on its deck large enough to hold more than 50 missiles, depending on their type, said researcher Jeffrey Lewis.

"They're pretty big cavities," said Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.

"I would think 32 (missiles) in front and a few fewer in the back would be a very reasonable number. Or it could be a much smaller number of ballistic missiles."

Vertical launch systems (VLS) allow ships to carry more missiles, and make launching and reloading easier.

Lewis said North Korea had developed several different types of missile that would be compatible with VLS cells, which Pyongyang had not fielded on any previous surface ship.

Such types include anti-ship cruise missiles, land attack cruise missiles, air defense missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, he added.

The new ships' armament seemed to hew close to South Korean navy standards, said Euan Graham, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

"I think we have to take conventional enhancements seriously, because North Korea has limited resources and has invested in nuclear weapons to close the deterrence gap with the Republic of Korea and United States," he added.

"So it must fit within their concept of operations, even if the concept appears odd to us."

North Korean state media released first photos of the ship in December, when leader Kim Jong Un conducted an inspection.

He later made several more visits to the shipyards, where the country said as recently as early March it was also building its first nuclear-powered submarine.

"Overwhelmingly powerful warships must serve as a strong nuclear deterrent against hostile forces' habitual 'gunboat diplomacy,'" state media reported Kim as saying.

South Korea's national defense ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lewis said compatibility with a VLS would make the weapons even more attractive as exports for countries that are cut off from, or cannot afford, other arms suppliers.

"If you were interested in buying North Korean anti-ship missiles because they were cheap, it would be awfully nice if they came in a tested VLS system," he said.

"Quantity has a quality all its own. Those North Korean missiles might not be as good as their Russian counterparts, but they are much, much cheaper."

The new ships, although more advanced than others in the North Korean fleet, may not make much of a difference in conflict, said Collin Koh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Their locations are well-known, they cannot operate far from North Korean shores and are decades behind the technology in South Korean and US warships.

But they show Pyongyang is serious about investments to improve its navy, he said.

"The North Korean navy is largely traditionally a coastal defense navy," he said. "So they are likely trying to reinvigorate the fleet."

Last year Kim stressed the importance of strengthening North Korea's navy. It recently finished fitting out its latest Sinpo-C ballistic missile submarine, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring program.