AP — 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 that 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 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........

© The Times of Israel