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Iranian dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was convicted of fomenting violence during anti-government protests in 2017, was executed on Saturday, Iran’s state television reported.
Iran said Tuesday that its supreme court had upheld the death sentence for Zam, who was captured in 2019 after years of living in exile in France. His Amadnews feed had more than a million followers.
State television said that Mr. Zam, “director of the counterrevolutionary network Amadnews, was hanged this morning.”
France and human rights groups have condemned the supreme court’s decision.
The press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the execution.
“RSF is outraged by this new crime of Iranian justice and sees (Supreme Leader Ayatollah) @ali_khamenei as the mastermind behind this execution,” the group tweeted.
Amnesty International said it was “shocked and horrified” by Iran’s action.
“We call on the international community, including the member states of the UN Human Rights Council and the EU, to take immediate steps to pressure the Iranian authorities to stop using the death penalty as a weapon of political repression,” he said the right-wing group. it says in a statement.
The son of a pro-reform Shiite cleric, Zam fled Iran and received asylum in France.
In October 2019, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had caught Zam in a “complex operation using intelligence hoaxes.” He did not say where the operation took place.
Nour News, a news agency close to the Revolutionary Guard, said last week that Guard agents detained Zam after he traveled to Iraq in September 2019 and took him to Iran.
Iranian officials have accused the United States, as well as Tehran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia, and government opponents living in exile of stoking the unrest, which began in late 2017 when regional protests over economic hardship broke out spread throughout the country.
Authorities said 21 people died during the riots and thousands were arrested. The unrest was one of the worst Iran has seen in decades, and was followed by even more deadly protests last year against rising fuel prices.
Zam’s Amadnews broadcast was suspended by messaging service Telegram in 2018 for allegedly inciting violence, but later reappeared under another name. – Reuters
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