Iran executes exiled journalist who encouraged 2017 protests

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran on Saturday executed an exiled journalist over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, a little more than a year after authorities tricked him into travelling to Iraq where he was abducted.

Ruhollah Zam, 47, was one of several opposition figures successfully seized by Iranian intelligence operatives abroad in recent months as Tehran struggles under the weight of U.S. sanctions.

Kidnapping and executing Zam, who lived in Paris under what Iran described as French government protection, likely will further chill an already-scattered Iranian opposition across the West. It also comes as Iran tries to pressure France and other European nations over the collapsed atomic accord in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The execution drew immediate international condemnation.

“This is barbarous and unacceptable act,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which also condemned the execution as a “grave blow” to freedom of expression and media freedom in Iran.

The German Foreign Ministry expressed shock about the circumstances of Zam’s conviction and what it described as his “abduction from abroad.” Canada condemned Zam’s execution, saying journalists perform ”essential work” and that Ottawa would hold “Iran accountable for its violations of human rights.”

Diana Eltahawy of Amnesty International said Zam’s “execution is a deadly blow to freedom of expression in Iran and shows the extent of the Iranian authorities’ brutal tactics to instil fear and deter dissent.”

Iranian state television referred to Zam as “the leader of the riots” in 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 cases involving espionage or attempts to overthrow Iran’s government.

Zam’s website AmadNews and a channel he created on the popular messaging app Telegram had spread the timings of the 2017 protests and embarrassing information about officials that directly challenged Iran’s Shiite theocracy.

Those demonstrations, which began at the end of December 2017 and continued into 2018, represented the biggest challenge to Iran’s rulers since the 2009 Green Movement protests and set the stage for similar mass unrest in November of last year.

The initial spark for the 2017 protests was a sudden jump in food prices. Many believe that hard-line opponents of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani instigated the first demonstrations in the conservative city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, trying to direct public anger at the president. But as protests spread from town to town, the backlash turned against the entire ruling class.

Soon, cries directly challenging Rouhani and even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be heard in online videos shared by Zam.

Telegram shut down the channel amid Iranian government complaints it spread information about how to make gasoline bombs. 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 detained and 25 killed.

Zam himself had fled Iran after the 2009 protests, heading first to Malaysia and then to France. While Iranian authorities have never described how Iran’s Revolutionary Guard detained him, Amnesty said he was seized on a trip to neighbouring Iraq — where the Guard has wielded deep influence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Zam’s father, the reformist Shiite cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, seemed to confirm the Iraqi abduction in comments on Instagram on Saturday.

“I made a deal with God, I have no worries, these people brought me to Karbala, but did not allow me to visit the shrine,” the Instagram post quotes the younger Zam as saying. Karbala is home to the shrine of Imam Hussein, an important pilgrimage point for Shiites.

The post added: “I told him, ‘Don’t worry, Imam Hussein is in all visitors’ hearts, he is with you.’”

The cleric said he only was allowed to visit Tehran’s Evin prison on Friday to see his son after agreeing with authorities not to tell him his execution loomed. Iranian media did not acknowledge the post.

Reporters Without Borders, a group that campaigns for press freedoms, said Zam’s hanging was a “new crime of Iranian justice.”

Sherif Mansour of the Committee to Protect Journalists said Zam’s execution had seen “Iranian authorities join the company of criminal gangs and violent extremists who silence journalists by murdering them.”

“This is a monstrous and shameful act, and one which the international community must not let pass unnoticed,” Mansour said.

Iran is one of the world’s top executioners. The European Union called on Iran to stop its executions and “cease the practice of using televised confessions to establish and promote their guilt.” Zam has been the subject of several state TV programs in which he gave apparently coerced confessions.

Zam is one of three opposition figures apparently detained in intelligence operations abroad. In late July, a California-based member of an Iranian militant opposition group in exile was abducted by Iran while staying in Dubai, his family has said.

Iran also is believed to have seized the former head of the Arab Struggle 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 wounded 70.

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Associated Press writers John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP

Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press