Iran, the death sentence of dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam – Corriere.it carried out

the dissident Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, founder of the Telegram channel Amad News, He was executed today at dawn in a prison in his country. This was announced by the government news agency IRNA: Zam was hanged, following the death sentence handed down in June at the end of a corruption trial that Reporters Without Borders had described as extremely unfair. Zam’s Telegram channel had more than a million followers, even among the foreign press that often used it as a reliable source, for example during the 2017-2018 street protests, which Zam was now accused of fomenting. The account was suspended in 2018, but it resumed communications under a different name. Ruollah Zam was 42 years old and the son of Mohammad Ali – Zam, a reformist who held political office in the 1980s and 1990s.

He was arrested in 2019, upon returning to Iran after a period as a refugee in France, where he was placed under the protection of the Paris government. He had been in prison for a few weeks before his escape abroad. for challenging the Iranian establishment in power after the 2009 presidential elections. In October 2019, state television broadcast his confession: Zam, tried and prisoner, had appeared on video to admit my mistakes and ask for forgiveness. On television, for the first time, he had admitted that the mission of the Amad News channel was to attack the government. In June 2020, the ruling: the accusation was that he had incited the street protests that ignited the country in 2017 and 2018 and that it represented a serious threat to the established power in the country. In the trial that later led to his death sentence, Zam was also accused of having collaborated directly with the United States government to interfere in the country’s economic system; to work as a spy for French intelligence, and also to carry out espionage operations for a foreign intelligence in our region. Mizan, the information body of the judiciary, reports that Zam has attacked the security of the Iranian people with his antagonistic Telegram channel and spy operations. His crimes led to the death of a large number of our compatriots.