Oscar-nominated Iranian screenwriter released from prison after 17 days

Mehdi Mahmoudian, the Oscar-nominated cowriter of “It Was Just an Accident,” has been released from an Iranian prison 17 days after his arrest, according to local media reports.

Mahmoudian was arrested in Tehran shortly after signing a statement condemning Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime’s violent crackdown on anti-regime demonstrators. Today, he is released from the Nowshahr prison, along with two other signatories of the statement, Vida Rabbani and Abdollah Momeni.

No further details on any charges against Mahmoudian are immediately available. All three are released on bail.

Mahmoudian is nominated for best original screenplay at the Academy Awards, along with Nader Saeivar, Shadmehr Rastin and director Jafar Panahi. The film, a revenge drama inspired by Panahi’s own time in jail, is also nominated for best international feature, as a submission from France.

“Mehdi Mahmoudian, Vida Rabbani, and Abdollah Momeni peacefully exercised their right to express their views, but the regime responded by accusing them of ‘insulting the Supreme Leader’ and ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic,’” Panahi says in a statement. “For years, such charges have been used as tools to criminalize thought, silence criticism, and instill fear in society. Turning a civil and peaceful act into a national security case is a clear sign of intolerance toward the independent voices of citizens.”

Mahmoudian, a writer and political activist, has previously been imprisoned multiple times, including a five-year term that ended in 2014 on charges of “mutiny against the regime.” Panahi, who has himself been jailed and put under house arrest by the Islamic Republic regime, first met him in prison.

Thousands were killed in last month’s nationwide anti-regime protests in Iran, with rights groups saying the true toll could be in the tens of thousands.