SULAIMANI (ESTA) — France reacted with anger to Iran’s execution of a Paris-based dissident journalist, which it said ran counter to Tehran’s international obligations.
“France condemns in the strongest possible terms this serious breach of free expression and press freedom in Iran,” the foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, after the execution of Ruhollah Zam was reported by Iranian state media.
“This is a barbaric and unacceptable act that goes against the country’s international commitments.”
Iran said on Tuesday its Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence against Zam, who was captured in 2019 after years of living in exile in France. His Amadnews feed had more than 1 million followers.
State TV said Zam, “director of the counter-revolutionary Amadnews network, was hanged this morning”.
Press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the execution.
“RSF is outraged at this new crime of Iranian justice and sees [Supreme Leader Ayatollah] @ali_khamenei as the mastermind of this execution,” the group tweeted.
The European Union also denounced the execution, calling on the Iranian authorities to “uphold the due process rights of accused individuals and cease the practice of using televised confessions to establish and promote their guilt”.
“The European Union condemns this act in the strongest terms and recalls once again its irrevocable opposition to the use of capital punishment under any circumstances,” said a statement from the EU’s External Action Service.
“The European Union calls on Iran to refrain from any future executions and to pursue a consistent policy towards the abolition of the death penalty.”
Amnesty International said it was “shocked and horrified” by Iran’s action.
“We call on the international community, including member states of the UN Human Rights Council and the EU, to take immediate action to pressure the Iranian authorities to halt their escalating use of the death penalty as a weapon of political repression,” the rights group said in a statement.
The son of a pro-reform Shia cleric, Zam fled Iran and was given asylum in France.
In October 2019, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it had trapped Zam in a “complex operation using intelligence deception”. It did not say where the operation took place.
Nour News, a news agency close to the Revolutionary Guards, said last week that Zam was detained by Guards agents after he travelled to Iraq in September 2019 and brought to Iran.
Iranian officials have accused the United States, as well as Tehran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia and government opponents living in exile, of stoking the unrest that began in late 2017 as regional protests over economic hardship spread nationwide.
(Esta Media Network/Agencies)
