A court in Tehran has sentenced this Tuesday 'in absentia' the Iranian director Jafar Panahi to five years in prison, to a two-year prohibition from leaving the country and from posting on social media, in addition to ordering the confiscation of his properties and the blocking of his bank accounts.
This ruling is part of the prolonged legal battle that the prestigious filmmaker has been dragging for years, who was already imprisoned for alleged crimes against the State until his release in 2010.
Panahi's lawyer, Mostafa Nili, has declared to the semi-official agency Isna and to the reformist newspaper "Etemad" that the ruling would be linked to a new case —there are already three open proceedings against the director— and that his client has not received any notification regarding the date of the hearing related to this last file.
Nili has also expressed his bewilderment because the judicial documentation places Panahi outside the country, when it is publicly known that the filmmaker returned to Iran on April 10, in the midst of the context of the war in Iran.