Iranian Court Gives Jafar Panahi Five-Year Sentence
The Palme d'Or winner was sentenced in absentia and his assets were ordered seized, his lawyer said. He has not been detained.
An Iranian court has given the film director Jafar Panahi a new prison sentence of five years and one month. It also ordered the seizure of all his assets, his lawyer Mostafa Nili told the Iranian outlet Emtedad.
Panahi, 66, was sentenced in absentia. He won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year for It Was Just an Accident. The court also imposed a two-year travel ban and barred him from social media for two years, according to Nili.
The charges are unclear. Panahi came back to Iran in March from a trip abroad to promote the film. Last year he had already been sentenced in absentia to a year in prison for "propaganda activities against the system."
A friend of Panahi, an activist based in Europe, told the Associated Press that he spoke with the director on Monday evening after the sentencing. Panahi had not been detained.
Lawyers question the seizure
Nili said Panahi currently faces three open legal cases. He had not been notified of the hearing date in the latest one and learned of it only when his bank accounts were frozen last week.
Moein Khazaeli, a human rights lawyer at the legal counselling centre Dadban, said the sentence and the confiscation of assets could violate Iran's constitution. That would be the case unless the authorities establish a clear legal basis linking the property to an alleged offence.
Reaction from artists
The actor Setareh Maleki, who went into exile after starring in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, told the Guardian that "one of the greatest fears of a dictatorship is losing control over the stories people tell." Actor Nazanin Boniadi called the ruling "yet another attempt to silence a courageous artist."
A film-maker shooting a film in secret inside Iran, who asked not to be named, said she believed the sentence was linked to Panahi's calls for unity during the January protests. She also pointed to his support for diverse voices inside Iran, including supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the former shah.
The US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said in a recent report that Iranian authorities are intensifying their crackdown on artists, writers, poets, musicians and other cultural figures.
Source: The Guardian