On Thursday, he began a hunger strike to protest that his hopes of being released on bail appeared to have been dashed by the country’s judiciary, despite his sentence being overturned by Iran’s Supreme Court.
“I will refuse to eat and drink all kinds of food and medicine until I am released. I will remain in this state until my possibly lifeless body is free from prison,” he announced.
The 62-year-old Panahi was arrested in July last year and put in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison to serve a six-year sentence that had already been handed down in 2010, after he was convicted of “propaganda against the system”.