Iran Executes Blogger Ruhollah Zam
- 12-Dec-2020
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Iranian authorities on Saturday morning executed once-exiled dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam over his online work that helped inspire nationwide anti-government protests in the Middle East nation in 2017.
The execution took place just months after he returned to Tehran under mysterious circumstances.
In June, a court sentenced 47-year-old 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.
Iran’s Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence.
‘Serious blow to press freedom’
Zam’s website AmadNews and a channel he created on the popular messaging app Telegram had spread the timings of the mass protests and embarrassing information about officials that directly challenged Iran’s Shiite theocracy.
Those demonstrations, which began at the end of 2017, represented the biggest challenge to Iran 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, but they later morphed into broad demonstrations against the nation’s ruling class.
