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Amnesty International will lead a delegation of celebrities to the Iran Mission to the United Nations on June 8 to symbolically rename a nearby New York City street plaza “Azadi Square” (“Freedom Square”) and deliver tens of thousands of petition signatures demanding the reversal of the harsh sentence against acclaimed film director Jafar Panahi.

The group will include Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis, Iranian-born actress Nazanin Boniadi, film producer and actress Trudie Styler and journalist/filmmaker Maziar Bahari, whose book about his imprisonment and torture in Iran was published on June 6.

The artists will join Amnesty International USA executive director Larry Cox and human-rights activists for a rally, photo opportunity and press conference outside the mission offices, located at 622 Third Avenue. With symbolic “street signs” in Farsi, the plaza area adjacent to the mission will be renamed after the city square in Tehran that was the location of massive peaceful protests against government repression. The delegation will then attempt to personally present to mission officials petition papers signed by more than 20,000 people demanding that Panahi’s sentence be overturned.

The petitions were signed by Haggis, Boniadi and Styler along with other luminaries including Martin Scorsese, Edward Zwick, Ridley Scott, Phillip Noyce, Ron Howard, Paul Mazusky, Harvey Weinstein, Lina Wertmuller... >>>