Iran Executes Defector Journalist Ruhollah Zam

Illustration (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - A defector journalist in Iran, Ruhollah Zam, charged with provoking violence in anti-government protests in 2017, has been executed on Saturday, December 12.

On Tuesday, December 8, Iran's Supreme Court sentenced Zam, who was arrested in 2019, to death, after spending several years in exile.

As reported by Antara, Saturday, December 12, the Seda va Sima television channel said that Zam, "the director of the counter-revolutionary Amadnews network, had been hanged this morning."

The Amadnews page was suspended by messaging service Telegram in 2018 on charges of inciting violence, but later the web page resurfaced under a different name.

France and human rights groups say they condemned the Iranian Supreme Court decision.

Zam, who is the son of a pro-reform Shia leader, had fled Iran and received asylum in France.

In October 2019, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had trapped Zam in a "difficult operation using intelligence deception", but did not say where the operation took place.

Iranian officials have blamed the United States and Tehran's regional rivals Saudi Arabia and France of instigating the unrest, which began in late 2017 as a regional protest over economic hardship.

Iran says as many as 21 people were killed in the rioting and thousands of people were detained. The rioting, one of the worst in Iran in decades, was followed by deadly protests in 2019 against rising fuel prices.