AFP: An Iranian film-maker and outspoken critic of his country’s regime who was missing in Germany for 12 days has resurfaced, prosecutors said on Monday.
BERLIN (AFP) — An Iranian film-maker and outspoken critic of his country’s regime who was missing in Germany for 12 days has resurfaced, prosecutors said on Monday.
Daryush Shokof, whose latest film “Hitler’s Grave” denounces the hardline Iranian government, was expected in Paris on May 24 but was last seen at a rail station in the western city of Cologne, the National Council of Resistance of Iran opposition group had reported.
He was found late Saturday in Cologne, a spokesman for the city’s public prosecutor, Guenther Feld, told AFP but declined to provide further details.
The local daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that the 55-year-old director was found by three youths on the banks of the Rhine, physically weakened and saying he had been kidnapped.
Feld declined to comment on the allegations, citing a police inquiry, but said the probe was “very general” and not specifically focused on an alleged abduction.
The 55-year-old director, who lives in Germany and directed Anthony Quinn in “Seven Servants” in 1996, has reportedly held a number of hunger strikes demanding political liberalisation in Iran.
