TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran on Saturday hanged a once-deported journalist for his workline work, which helped provoke a nationwide economic protest in 2017, officials said, just months after he returned to Tehran under mysterious circumstances.
Ruhullah Zam, 47, was hanged early Saturday morning, according to Iranian state television and the government-run IRNA news agency. Reports have not been elaborated.
In June, a court sentenced Zamman to death, saying he had been convicted of “corruption on Earth”, a charge often used in espionage or attempts to overthrow the Iranian government.
A channel he created on Zem’s website, Amadnews, and a popular warning telegram, spread shameful information about the timing of the protests and the officials who directly challenged Iran’s Shiite extremism.
The demonstrations, which began in late 2017, presented the biggest challenge to Iran since the Green Movement’s protests and set the stage for a similar mass unrest in November last year.
The initial spark for the 2017 protests was a sudden surge in food prices. Many believe that radical opponents of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani staged the first demonstrations in the northeastern Iranian capital, Mashhad, in an attempt to vent public anger at the president. But as the protests spread throughout the city, the reaction against the entire ruling class continued.
Soon, Rouhani is crying out for a direct challenge and videos shared by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamani can also be heard in online videos shared by Zam. The Jamni channel also shared time and organizational details for the protest.
Shuts down telegram channel over complaints from Iranian government, spreading information on how to make gasoline bombs. The channel later continued under a different name. Zam, who said he fled Iran after being falsely accused of working with foreign intelligence services, refused to incite violence on the telegram at the time.
About 5,000 people were detained and 25 were killed in the 2017 protests.
The details of his arrest are still unclear. Although it was located in Paris, Zam somehow managed to return to Iran and was detained by intelligence officials. He is one of several exiles who have returned to Iran in recent years.
France had earlier criticized his death sentence as “a serious blow to freedom of expression and the press in Iran.”
A series of television confessions earlier this year about his work.
During an interview in July, Zame said he has lost about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) since his arrest in October 2019. He said after the arrest he could meet his father after nine years and his mother and sister after six years.
Zem is the son of Shia cleric Mohammed Ali Zam, a reformist who served in government policy positions in the early 1980s. The cleric wrote a letter published by Iranian media in July 2017 in which he said he would not support Amadnews’ reports and messages on his son’s Tenegram channel.
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John Gamble, an Associated Press writer based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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