Screenwriter of Oscar-nominated Iranian drama It Was Just an Accident arrested in Tehran

One of the Oscar-nominated screenwriters of the Iranian drama It Was Just an Accident has been arrested in Tehran just weeks before the Academy Awards.Representatives for the film on Sunday said Mehdi Mahmoudian was arrested on Saturday. No details on the charges against Mahmoudian were available but his arrest came just days after Mahmoudian and 16 others signed a statement condemning Islamic Republic leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime’s violent crackdown on demonstrators.Two other signatories, Vida Rabbani and Abdullah Momeni, were also arrested.Jafar Panahi, the prize-winning director of It Was Just an Accident, issued a statement on Sunday decrying his co-writer’s arrest.“Mehdi Mahmoudian is not just a human rights activist and a prisoner of conscience; he is a witness, a listener, and a rare moral presence – a presence whose absence is immediately felt, both inside prison walls and beyond them,” Panahi said.Panahi was also a signatory on the January 28 statement. It reads in part: “The mass and systematic killing of citizens who bravely took to the streets to bring an end to an illegitimate regime constitutes an organised state crime against humanity.”It Was Just an Accident is nominated for best screenplay and best international film at the March 15 Oscars. The film, made covertly in Iran, was France’s nominee for best international film.