Tehran - (AFP) - The Iranian judiciary confirmed on Tuesday that the opposition director, Jaafar Panahi, who was arrested last week, must serve a six-year prison sentence that was imposed on him more than a decade ago.

"Panahi was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison (...) and accordingly he was admitted to the detention center (prison) in Evin (Tehran) to serve this sentence," Judicial Authority spokesman Masoud Staishi said in a press conference.

On July 11, Iranian media reported Panahi's arrest, making him the third director to announce his detention within days, after Muhammad Rasoulaf and Mustafa Al-Ahmad.

The "Mehr" agency stated at the time that Panahi was arrested "while he was attending the Public Prosecution office in Tehran to follow up on the file of another director, Muhammad Rasoul Af."

Panahi, 62, is considered one of the most prominent names in contemporary Iranian cinema, and he won international awards, the most important of which was the Golden Bear Award for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015 for “Tehran Taxi” and the best screenplay at the Cannes Festival 2018 for “Three Faces”.

The arrest of Panahi, who had previously been sentenced to prison and officially banned from preparing cinematic works in his country, came after the disclosure on Friday of the arrest of directors Muhammad Rasoul Af and Mustafa Al-Ahmad on charges of “disrupting public order” in Iran.

Panahi was known for his opposition to the authorities in his country. He was arrested in 2010 and later convicted of “propaganda against the political system” of the Islamic Republic. He was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from directing or writing films for many years, or from traveling and speaking to the media, following his support for the protest movements that followed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadi. Ahmadinejad in 2009.

The official media revealed the arrest of Rasoul Af and Al Ahmad on charges of "disrupting public order" after they supported protest movements in Iranian regions against the background of the collapse of a building in the southwest of the country in May, in an accident that killed 43 people.

The collapse of the "Metropole" building, which was under construction in Abadan, Khuzestan Province, caused a disaster that is considered one of the worst in the Islamic Republic during the past years, followed by movements in several cities in solidarity with the families of the victims, protesting against corruption and incompetence, and demanding accountability for those responsible for the accident.

A group of Iranian filmmakers led by Rasoul Af published an open letter in late May calling on the security forces to "lay down their arms" in the face of anger at "corruption, theft, incompetence and oppression".

Likewise, Rasoul Af and Panahi were among the signatories in the same month of an open book criticizing the arrest of a number of their colleagues by the Iranian authorities at that time.

The administrations of international film festivals, such as Venice, Berlin and Cannes, called for the release of Panahi and his colleagues, while France expressed "concern" about the arrest of a number of directors in the Islamic Republic.