Jafar Panahi and His Family Arrested

In the early morning hours this week security agents raided the house of prominent Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and arrested him along with his wife, daughter and guests.  In a short interview with Rooz, Jafar Panahi’s son confirmed the news of his family’s arrests, saying, “About 25 plain-clothes agents searched the house for more than 5 hours and then took my father, mother and sister along with the guests.”

He said there were some 15 guests in the house when the agents raided the house, adding, “filmmaker Rasulov, and cinematographer Ebrahim Ghaffari were among the guests; unfortunately I don’t know the names of others.”  

Jafar Panahi’s son added, “Initially I was out of the house but when I arrived I saw agents in front of the house and so didn’t go in.  The neighbors told me that 25 plain-clothes agents, 4 of whom were women, had entered the building and were still there.  The neighbors had initially tried to prevent the agents from getting into the house and called the police for help, but they told the neighbors that because the plain-clothes agents were from the ministry of intelligence, they could not do anything.”

Panah Panahi added, “After searching the house for five hours, they took a computer and some devices with them.  I still don’t know in detail what they confiscated.”  

According to him, Jafar Panahi, his wife, daughter, and 15 of their guests were arrested and taken to an unknown location.  

Previously, security agents had barred Jafar Panahi from leaving Iran.

The filmmaker was scheduled to attend the Berlin Film Festival in Germany on Tuesday, 16 February, when he was prevented from boarding his airplane at Imam Khomeini airport.

Jafar Panahi had been arrested once before about seven months earlier, along with his wife, daughter and two other filmmakers after participating in popular protests at the iconic Behesht Zahra Cemetery in Tehran.  

This Iranian filmmaker had made the following comments regarding the June 12 election coup and Ahmadinejad’s presidency to Radio Farda: “Ahmadinejad will spread more humiliation.  They humiliate the people and will strive to impose greater rule on people.  The face that we saw after the voting was the face of a loser.  It seems like this will entice him to lie even more than before, and not be constrained by anything, and to implement his lies.  He tries to be ahead of the game and it is possible that he may undertake other dangerous actions.”