Filmmaker Murray refuses to say if Iran is paying him as he judges Tehran event

Prior to his death, Iran’s president had been considering attending festival where Belfast man is an honoured guest

PROMINENT Belfast filmmaker Sean Murray has refused to say if he is getting money from Iran as he dodged questions on being a “special guest” at an event in Tehran alongside individuals sanctioned by the US and the EU.

The notoriously repressive Iranian regime last year executed 834 people according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group, a surge in killing which came as women and girls protested at their repression in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

The 22-year-old had opposed the mandatory wearing of the hijab. She was arrested and beaten by the morality police; two hours later she was in intensive care where she remained until her death three days later.

Iran’s government kills people for “blasphemy”, adultery, and homosexuality. Those who escape death may face flogging, amputation, forced blinding, or other horrific sanctioned violence.

Mr Murray, who is best known for his film Unquiet Graves, a 2018 documentary about the Glenanne Gang, is in the Iranian capital Tehran as a judge in the Sobh Media Festival.

The event, which was held for the first time last year, claims to “encourage independent thinking” which “can give rise to resistance and opposition against oppressive powers”.

In an indication of the festival’s significance to the regime, the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday, had been interested in attending the event, according to its organisers.

They hailed the hardliner, who was infamous for his role in Tehran’s ‘death commission’ which slaughtered political dissenters in the 1980s, as a “martyr” who “sacrificed his life”.

In an article on the festival website, Mr Murray was said to have denounced how “western media” reports Iran, and said: “He believes the reality of Iran is different from what they show. He said what I saw during my trip to Iran was a beautiful and great country and it was not a strange image.”

It described Mr Murray as someone who has “extensive experience working with victims and survivors”.

In a video posted by the festival, another participant, Iranian Press TV host Marwa Osman, said “this is a nation of martyrs” and described Iran as part of an “axis of resistance”. She described “Zionest Israelis” as “the enemy of humanity” and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as “a resistance leader”.

Those present alongside Mr Murray at the festival include an individual with close ties to Vladimir Putin’s Wagner mercenary group.

Abbas Juma (also known as Djuma) is under US sanctions for supplying Iranian drones being used by Russia to attack Ukraine.

As with Mr Murray, Juma is described as a “special guest” of the event.

Juma has also been a board member of the FAN group, part of a wider disinformation campaign which included the notorious Internet Research Agency troll farm. The group was run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the warlord in charge of Wagner until he challenged Putin, dying in an air crash last year not long after a failed march on Moscow.

Mr Murray’s two colleagues on the judging panel for the documentary category at the festival are also deeply controversial.

Mohsen Bormahani, deputy director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), is subject to sanctions by the US, France, Belgium, Canada, and the EU. The EU says that the IRIB “acts as a regime mouthpiece” which “severely restricts and denies the free flow of information to the Iranian people”.

The EU says Bormahani is “responsible for serious human rights violations” with the broadcaster “actively involved in organising and broadcasting forced ‘confessions’ of regime critics, obtained through intimidation and severe violence. These ‘confessions’ are often aired following public protests, or prior to an execution as a means of reducing public backlash”.

The third judge in the documentary category is Igor Lopatonok, best-known for producing a fawning film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, a tyrant who ruled his nation for almost 30 years, winning an ‘election’ in 2015 with 97.5% of the vote.

Lopatonok denied the Kazak Government had funded the production — but it emerged that the regime was behind payments of at least $5m for the work.

Investigative journalists at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed earlier this year that he was pitching sycophantic documentaries to Alexander Lukashenko, Ilham Aliyev, and other authoritarian leaders in return for millions of dollars.

Lopatonok referred to the strongmen rulers known for systemic human rights abuses as “my heroes”.

The journalists reported that when questioning Lopatonok about his activities he threatened them, shouting “we’re going after you personally,” and “we’re going to destroy you”.

The Belfast Telegraph asked Mr Murray if he is now receiving, or has ever received, money from Iran, and whether during his visit he had publicly expressed any specific condemnation of the Iranian regime’s murder of woman for their dress, of gay people for their sexuality, of religious minorities for their faith, and of others who displease those in power.

We also asked if he had any regrets over being at this event alongside people who have been involved in sanitising the actions of dictators.

Mr Murray, who is at the festival with Cork comedian Tadhg Hickey, did not respond to the questions.

However, 90 minutes later he took to Twitter to allege that this newspaper was making an “attempt to smear me publicly without the courtesy of considerate communication”. He urged his followers to “share widely”.

Ignoring all of the questions about Iran, he then asked questions related to collusion in Northern Ireland, “the despots in Westminster”, a British “wholesale murder campaign”, the Royal family, child sex abuse, and “an ongoing televised genocide in Gaza”.

Over a series of tweets, he also said: “I’m not British, I don’t meddle in the affairs of other countries. Have you also considered I’m in Iran judging a media festival to advocate on behalf of those slaughtered in Gaza?”

Mr Murray, who has described himself as a republican and whose father is the senior IRA figure Sean ‘Spike’ Murray, was last year involved in co-hosting a programme on Press TV with Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew.

The MP declared to Parliament that she was paid £2,000 by Mr Murray for 18 hours work on the programme.

However, when asked about that by Sunday Life last year, Mr Murray distanced himself from the Iranian broadcaster, saying he had “never dealt with Press TV and was unaware [the programme] was being sold to them”.