The Palme d’Or-winning director of 'It Was Just an Accident' has been sentenced in absentia with a new ruling by a Tehran court that has also frozen his bank accounts.
\n\nCannes Palme d’Or-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi – who was facing a one-year prison sentence – has now been sentenced by a Tehran Revolutionary Court to five years and one month in jail in a separate ruling, according to the Emtedad News Agency, an online Iranian reformist media outlet.
\n\nPanahi’s lawyer Mostafa Nili told Emtedad that the court has now sentenced his client in absentia to five years and one month of imprisonment – though implementation of both rulings is discretionary – and issued an order for the confiscation of Panahi’s assets, plus a two-year ban on using social media a two-year travel ban. It is unclear what the charges against Panahi are in this case.
\n\nThe lawyer said that after Panahi’s bank accounts were suddenly frozen last week, he went to the prosecutor’s Tehran office with his client and learned of the verdict which has been issued in absentia. According to Nili, the case file stated that Panahi was living outside Iran, though the director had returned to Iran…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/