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".



UK Police Arrest 4 Over Pro-Palestinian Protest at Military Base

Tourists walk past the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament, in London, Britain, June 26, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
Tourists walk past the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament, in London, Britain, June 26, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
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UK Police Arrest 4 Over Pro-Palestinian Protest at Military Base

Tourists walk past the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament, in London, Britain, June 26, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
Tourists walk past the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament, in London, Britain, June 26, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes

British police have arrested four people in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest last week in which military planes were sprayed with paint at an air base in England, authorities said on Friday.

A woman, 29, and two men aged 36 and 24, were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, while another woman, 41, was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender, Reuters quoted the police as saying in a statement.

Two activists from the Palestine Action group broke into the air base in central England on June 20, damaging and spraying red paint over two planes used for refueling and transport, an act that was condemned by Prime Minister Keir Starmer as "disgraceful."

Within days the government set out plans to use anti-terrorism laws to
ban Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group. Interior minister Yvette Cooper then said its actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.

The government also said last week that it was reviewing security across all British defense sites following the incident.