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Iran on Saturday executed a journalist in exile for his online work that helped inspire national economic protests in 2017, just over a year after authorities tricked him into traveling to Iraq, where he was kidnapped.
Ruhollah Zam, 47, was one of several opposition figures successfully captured by Iranian intelligence agents abroad in recent months as Tehran struggles under the weight of US sanctions.
Kidnapping and executing Zam, who was living in Paris under what Iran described as protection from the French government, will likely further cool an Iranian opposition already scattered throughout the west.
It also comes as Iran tries to pressure France and other European nations over the collapse of the atomic deal in the final days of President Donald Trump’s administration.
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The execution prompted immediate international condemnation.
“This is a barbaric and unacceptable act,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which also condemned the execution as a “serious blow” to freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Iran.
The German Foreign Ministry expressed shock at the circumstances of Zam’s conviction and what it described as his “kidnapping abroad.”
Ali Shirband / AP
Journalist Ruhollah Zam speaks during his trial at the Revolutionary Court of Iran. State news agencies say Zam was hanged early Saturday, a few months after he returned to Tehran under mysterious circumstances.
Diana Eltahawy of Amnesty International said that Zam’s execution “is a deadly blow to freedom of expression in Iran and shows the extent of the brutal tactics of the Iranian authorities to instill fear and deter dissent.”
Iranian state television referred to Zam as “the leader of the riots” when announcing his execution by hanging early Saturday.
In June, a court sentenced Zam to death, saying he had been convicted of “corruption on Earth,” a charge often used in espionage cases or attempts to overthrow the Iranian government.
Zam’s website, AmadNews, and a channel he created on the popular messaging app Telegram, had released the 2017 protest schedules and embarrassing information about officials directly challenging Iran’s Shiite theocracy.
Those demonstrations, which began in late December 2017 and continued into 2018, posed the biggest challenge to Iran’s rulers since the 2009 Green Movement protests and set the stage for similar mass unrest in November last year.
The initial spark of the 2017 protests was a sudden spike in food prices. Many believe that hardline opponents of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani instigated the first demonstrations in the conservative city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, trying to direct public anger against the president. But as the protests spread from town to town, the backlash turned against the entire ruling class.
Soon, the screams directly challenging Rouhani and even the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could be heard on online videos shared by Zam.
Telegram shut down the channel due to complaints from the Iranian government that it released information on how to make gasoline pumps. The channel later continued under a different name. Zam denied inciting violence on Telegram at the time.
The 2017 protests reportedly saw some 5,000 people arrested and 25 killed.
Uncredited / AP
Protesters chanted slogans in Tehran in September after Iran broadcast the televised confession of a fighter facing the death penalty, a segment that resembled hundreds of other confessions under suspicion of duress issued over the past decade in the Republic. Islamic
Zam himself had fled Iran after the 2009 protests, heading first to Malaysia and then to France.
While the Iranian authorities have never described how he was detained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Amnesty said he was detained on a trip to neighboring Iraq, where the Guard has exercised profound influence since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled the dictator. Iraqi Saddam Hussein.
Zam’s father, reformist Shiite cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, appeared to confirm the Iraqi abduction in comments on Instagram on Saturday.
“I made a deal with God, I have no worries, these people took me to Karbala, but they did not allow me to visit the shrine,” says the Instagram post quoting the young Zam. Karbala is home to the Imam Hussein shrine, an important pilgrimage point for Shiites.
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Evin Prison in Tehran, where Zam was detained prior to his execution. His father, reformist Shiite cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, says he was only allowed to visit his son after agreeing with authorities not to tell him his execution was looming.
The post added: “I told him, ‘Don’t worry, Imam Hussein is in the hearts of all visitors, he is with you.’
The cleric said he was only allowed to visit Evin Prison in Tehran on Friday to see his son after agreeing with authorities not to tell him his execution was looming. Iranian media did not acknowledge the post.
Reporters Without Borders, a group that campaigns for press freedom, said Zam’s hanging was a “new crime for Iranian justice.”
Sherif Mansour, from the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that in Zam’s execution “the Iranian authorities joined the company of criminal gangs and violent extremists who silence journalists by murdering them.”
“This is a monstrous and shameful act, and one that the international community must not let go unnoticed,” Mansour said.
Iran is one of the world’s top enforcers. The European Union called on Iran to halt its executions and “cease the practice of using televised confessions to establish and promote its guilt.”
Zam has been the subject of several state television shows to which he apparently confessed under duress.
Zam is one of three opposition figures apparently detained in foreign intelligence operations. In late July, Iran kidnapped a member of a California-based militant Iranian opposition group in exile while he was in Dubai, his family said.
Iran is also believed to have seized the former head of the Arab Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, a militant separatist group, while he was in Turkey.
Iran has accused Farajollah Cha’ab of being behind a 2018 attack on a military parade that killed at least 25 people and injured 70.
