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Ruhollah Zam, 47, was executed by hanging on Saturday morning, Iranian state television announced the same day. Ruhollah Zam, a journalist and activist critical of the regime, lived in exile in Paris. He relayed the news of the violent street protests against the regime that rocked several Iranian cities in early 2017/2018.
The protests were sparked by discontent with higher food and gasoline prices. About twenty people died and more than 1,000 were arrested. During the riots, authorities closed the Internet in several cities.
Ruhollah zam who ran a website critical of the regime, AmadNews, came to play an important role during the protests. AmadNews was spread through the encrypted messaging application Whatsapp and had 1.4 million followers.
According to Ruhollah Zam’s widow, Mahsa Razini, he was tricked in September 2019 into traveling to Baghdad in Iraq. There he was arrested by agents of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and transferred to Iran. His father, who is a pro-reform scribe, appealed to the Iranian authorities to stop the execution.
The Swedish-Iranian researcher Ahmadreza Djalili has been imprisoned in Iran since 2016, sentenced to death and charged with espionage.
Photo: Amnesty International
There are points of contact between the case of Ruhollah Zam and the Swedish-Iranian doctor and investigator Ahmadreza Djalili, who has been imprisoned in Iran since April 2016, sentenced to death and charged with espionage.
Both Zam and Djalili have undergone legal proceedings in which legal certainty has been completely non-existent. None of them have had access to a defense attorney in the true sense.
Both have been forced into “confessions” which have been broadcast on television and which show all the signs of having been pushed forward with threats and torture.
And in both the Zams and Djalili cases, the court has invoked the peculiar crime of “corruption on earth,” a term that includes a series of crimes punishable by death.
But Ahmadreza Djalili, 48, still lives. However, the situation is dire. Two weeks ago, he was said to have been transferred from Evin Prison, where he had been imprisoned in a prison in a suburb of Tehran. The death penalty was to be carried out in this prison.
But the information about where Djalili is is contradictory: according to Djalili’s wife, Vida Mehrannia, with whom DN has been in contact, remains in Evin prison. However, it is completely clear that the authorities acted to carry out the execution.
For the past two weeks, the execution has been postponed, most recently on Tuesday this week, according to the Swedish section of Amnesty International, which has been heavily involved in the Ahmaderza Djalali case.
– The situation remains acute and the risk of his execution is as high as before, we continue to work for his release and we assume that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does the same, as much as it can, says Ami Hedenborg, spokesperson for Amnesty Sweden .
There is a general public opinion to stop Djalali’s execution. Amnesty Sweden has collected more than 106,000 signatures that are continuously delivered to the Iranian embassy in Stockholm.
Ahmadreza Djalali is also receiving a lot of attention in Belgium and Italy, countries where the internationally renowned disaster researcher has been active from time to time. The international academic world has also become involved in the case. Last week, 164 of Djalali’s research colleagues held a “YouTube marathon” in which each of the researchers made personal appeals to Iranian leaders to stop the execution.
The EU condemned Zam’s execution on Saturday.
“The European Union strongly condemns this act and once again expresses (the EU’s) irrevocable opposition to the death penalty,” the EU said in a statement.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde contacted Iran when information came in late November about the execution of Djalili’s death sentence. DN has contacted Ann Linde for a current comment.
