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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)
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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".

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3 Tourists among 4 Killed after Italian Cable Car Crashes into Ravine South of Naples

View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)
View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)
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3 Tourists among 4 Killed after Italian Cable Car Crashes into Ravine South of Naples

View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)
View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

Three tourists, including a British couple, were among four people who were killed when a mountain cable car plunged into a ravine south of Naples, officials confirmed Saturday.

Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement that it is "supporting the families of a British couple who have died in Italy and are in touch with the local authorities.”

On Friday, a day after the accident, a spokesperson for the mayor of Vico Equense had said that the pair were siblings, but confirmed Saturday that that was based on bad information.

An Israeli woman was the third foreign victim to be identified following Thursday's accident.

The fourth victim was the Italian driver of the cable car. A fifth tourist, said to be the brother of the Israeli victim, is in a stable but critical condition at a Naples hospital, officials said, The AP news reported.

Initial reports suggested that a traction cable may have snapped as the cable car ascended Monte Faito, in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The cable car plunged into a ravine after stopping very close to the station at the top of the peak, at around 1,050 meters (3,400 feet).

Sixteen passengers were helped out of another cable car that was stuck mid-air near the foot of the mountain following the incident.

The accident happened just a week after the cable car, which is popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season. It averages around 110,000 visitors each year.

The emergency services, including Italy’s alpine rescue, more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection personnel, worked into the evening in severe weather conditions, with fog and strong winds making rescue operations difficult.

“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station," Luigi Vicinanza, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, said on Thursday. He added that there had been regular safety checks on the cable car line, which runs 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the town to the top of the mountain.

Local prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter, which will involve an inspection of the cable stations, the pylons, the two cabins and the cable, officials said Friday.

The company running the service, the EAV public transport firm, said the seasonal cable car had reopened with all the required safety conditions.

“The reopening had taken place a week ago after three months of tests every day, day and night," said EAV President Umberto De Gregorio. "This is something inexplicable.”

De Gregorio said technical experts believed there was no connection between the severe weather and the cause of the crash. "There is an automatic system. When the wind exceeds a certain level, the cable car stops automatically,” he said.

The Monte Faito cable car opened in 1952. Four people died in 1960 when a pylon broke.

Italy has recorded two similar fatal accidents involving cable cars in recent years.

A cable car crash in May 2021 in northern Italy killed 14 people, including six Israelis, among them a family of four. In 1998, a low-flying US military jet cut through the cable of a ski lift in Cavalese, in the Dolomites, killing 20 people.