Zam was best known for reporting on a wave of anti-regime protests in 2018.
Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, whose reporting helped spur large anti-government protests, was executed by Iran on Saturday morning, according to reports by state media. Zam,47, was found guilty of “corruption on earth” and sentenced to death in June 2020. The sentence was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court on Tuesday this week, shortly before his execution. The vague charge of “corruption on earth” is often used “in cases involving espionage or attempts to overthrow Iran’s government,” Al Jazeera reported Saturday. Zam ran the site Amad News and coordinated a Telegram channel, both of which helped spread information during a wave of anti-regime protests that shook Iran in 2017 and 2018. He was living abroad in Paris at the time, but returned to the Middle East in 2019 and was arrested in Iraq by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It’s unclear exactly why Zam returned to the region, but Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted Saturday that Zam was “reportedly lured to Iraq (from France), kidnapped, taken back to Iran, and tortured into confession. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters.” Zam’s execution has drawn international condemnation. The international human rights group Amnesty International argued Zam’s conviction stemmed from a “grossly unfair trial” and his execution — by hanging — was rushed following the Supreme Court ruling in a “reprehensible bid to avoid an international campaign to save his life.” “With the execution of Roohollah Zam, Iranian authorities join the company of criminal gangs and violent extremists who silence journalists by murdering them,” Committee to Protect Journalists program coordinator Sherif Mansour said in a statement Saturday. “This is a monstrous and shameful act, and one which the international community must not let pass unnoticed.”It’s been a tumultuous three years in Iran Zam primarily drew the ire of the Iranian regime for his role in a spate of protests almost three years ago.
