PARIS: Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been released on bail after starting a hunger strike to protest against his almost seven-month detention, supporters said on Friday.
The director had been arrested months before the current anti-regime protests erupted, but his imprisonment became a symbol of the plight of artists speaking out against the authorities.
Panahi has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison “two days after starting his hunger strike for freedom,” the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said on Twitter, while Iran’s reformist Shargh newspaper posted an image of Panahi jubilantly embracing a supporter.
His wife Tahereh Saeedi posted a picture on Instagram of Panahi being driven from prison in a vehicle.
The prize-winning director was arrested in July and went on a dry hunger strike on Wednesday to protest his continued detention.
“Mr Panahi was temporarily released from Evin prison with the efforts of his family, respected lawyers, and representatives of the cinema,” Iran’s House of Cinema, which groups together industry professionals, said in a statement.
The announcement that Panahi was going on a dry hunger strike sparked a wave of concern across the world about the director, who has won prizes at all of Europe’s top three film festivals.
“Today, like many people trapped in Iran, I have no choice but to protest against this inhumane behavior with my dearest possession — my life,” Panahi had said in the statement published by his wife.
“I will remain in this state until perhaps my lifeless body is freed from prison,” he said.
Panahi, 62, was arrested on July 11 and had been due to serve a six-year sentence handed down in 2010 after his conviction for “propaganda against the system.”
On October 15, the Supreme Court quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial, raising hopes among his legal team that he could be released, but he remained in prison.
Panahi won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for his film “The Circle.” In 2015, he won the Golden Bear in Berlin for “Taxi Tehran,” and in 2018, he won the best screenplay prize at Cannes for “Three Faces.”
Panahi’s latest film, “No Bears,” which like much of his recent work stars the director himself, was screened at the 2022 Venice Film Festival when the director was already behind bars. It won the Special Jury Prize.
“It is extraordinary, a relief, a total joy. We express our gratitude to all those who mobilized yesterday,” his French distributor, producer Michele Halberstadt, told AFP.
“His next fight is to have the cancelation of his sentence officially recognized. He’s outside, he’s free, and this is already great.”
Panahi’s July arrest came after he attended a court hearing for fellow film director Mohammad Rasoulof, who had been detained a few days earlier.
Rasoulof was released from prison on January 7 after being granted a two-week furlough for health reasons and is still believed to be outside of jail.
Cinema figures have been among the thousands of people arrested by Iran in its crackdown on the protests sparked by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested for allegedly violating its strict dress code for women.
Star actor Taraneh Alidoosti, who had published images of herself without wearing the Islamic headscarf, was among those detained, although she was released in early January after being held for almost three weeks.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi released after hunger strike
https://arab.news/yu8n4
Iranian director Jafar Panahi released after hunger strike
- The director had been arrested months before the current anti-regime protests erupted
- His wife Tahereh Saeedi posted a picture on Instagram of Panahi being driven from prison in a vehicle
Sudan ‘lost all sources of revenue’ in the war: finance minister to AFP
- Ibrahim said the government is eyeing deals for Red Sea ports and private investment
- Gold production is rising year-on-year, but “unfortunately, much of it has been smuggled... across borders”
PORT SUDAN: Widespread destruction, massive military spending and plummeting oil and gold revenues have left Sudan’s economy in “very difficult times,” army-aligned finance minister Gibril Ibrahim said, nearly three years into the army’s war with rival paramilitary forces.
In an interview with AFP from his office in Port Sudan, Ibrahim said the government is eyeing deals for Red Sea ports and private investment to help rebuild infrastructure.
This week, Sudan’s prime minister announced the government’s official return to Khartoum, recaptured last year, but Ibrahim’s ministry is among those yet to fully return.
Dressed in combat uniform, the former rebel leader said Sudan, already one of the world’s poorest countries before the war, “lost all sources of state revenue in the beginning of the war,” when the Rapid Support Forces overtook the capital Khartoum and its surroundings.
“Most of the industry, most of the big companies and all of the economic activity was concentrated in the center,” he said, saying the heartland had accounted for some 80 percent of state revenue.
Ibrahim’s ex-rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement once battled Khartoum’s government but it has fought on the army’s side as part of the Joint Forces coalition of armed groups.
- Smuggling -
Sudan, rich in oil, gold deposits and arable land, is currently suffering the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with over half of its population in need of aid to survive.
Gold production is rising year-on-year, but “unfortunately, much of it has been smuggled... across borders,” he said.
Of the 70 tons produced in 2025, only “20 tons have been exported through official channels.”
In 2024, Sudan produced 64 tons of gold, bringing in only $1.57 billion to the state’s depleted coffers, with much of the revenue spilling out via smuggling networks.
Agricultural exports have fallen 43 percent, with much of the country’s productive gum Arabic, sesame and peanut-growing regions in paramilitary hands, in the western Darfur and southern Kordofan regions.
Sudan’s livestock industry, also based predominantly in Darfur, has lost 55 percent of its exports, he said.
Since the RSF captured the army’s last holdout position in Darfur in October, the war’s worst fighting has shifted east to the oil-rich Kordofan region.
While both sides scramble for control of the territory, the country’s oil revenues have dropped by more than 50 percent — its most productive refinery, Al-Jaili near Khartoum, severely damaged.
- ‘Reconstruction’ -
Determined to defeat the RSF, authorities allocated 40 percent of last year’s budget to the war effort, up from 36 percent in 2024, according to Ibrahim, who did not specify amounts.
Yet the cost of reconstruction in areas regained by the army is immense: in December 2024, the government estimated it would need $200 billion to rebuild.
Authorities are currently eyeing public-private partnership, with firms that “are ready to spend money” including on infrastructure, Ibrahim said.
Sudan’s long Red Sea coast has over the years drawn the interest of foreign actors eager for a base on the vital waterway, through which around 12 percent of global trade passes.
“We will see which partner is the best to build a port,” the minister said, listing both Saudi Arabia and Qatar as “the main applicants.”
The Russians, for their part, had also wanted “a small port where they can have supplies,” he said, adding that “they didn’t go ahead with that yet.”
As the war rages on, Sudan shoulders a massive public debt bill, which in 2023 reached 253 percent of GDP, before falling slightly to 221 percent in 2025, according to figures reported by the International Monetary Fund.
Sudan has known only triple-digit annual inflation for years. Figures for 2025 stood at 151 percent — down from a 2021 peak of 358.
The currency has also collapsed, going from trading before the war at 570 Sudanese pounds against the dollar, to 3500 in 2026, according to the black-market rate.
Ibrahim, 71, first joined the government in 2021 as part of a short-lived transitional administration. He retained his position through a military coup later that year.
He is among several Sudanese officials sanctioned by Washington in its attempt to “limit Islamist influence within Sudan and curtail Iran’s regional activities.”
