Iran summons German envoy over EU sympathy for executed propagandist
Iran's Foreign Ministry has summoned Germany’s ambassador to Tehran after the European Union expressed strong sympathy for the former administrator of an anti-Iran website, who was executed earlier for a crime punishable by death under Iranian law.
The envoy was called in on Sunday and notified of the Islamic Republic’s protest over the bloc’s heavily sympathetic statement a day earlier in favor of Rouhollah Zam.
The European statement condemned Zam’s execution “in the strongest terms,” suggested that Tehran had violated the convict’s right to due process, and accused the country of using enforced “televised confessions.” The German Foreign Ministry separately expressed “shock” about the circumstances surrounding Zam's conviction and, what it described as, his "abduction from abroad."
Zam, who used to run the counterrevolutionary Amad News website, was hanged on Saturday after Iran’s Supreme Court upheld a death sentence issued by the Islamic Revolution Court back in June.
The court handed down the sentence after convicting him of corruption on earth, among other crimes.
He was convicted of committing offenses against the country’s internal and external security, spreading lies, abetting economic disruption, spying for the intelligence services of France and one of the regional states, cooperating with the hostile US government against the Islamic Republic, participating in propaganda activities against the Islamic establishment on behalf of counterrevolutionary groups, fueling violence during the 2017 riots, insulting the sanctities of Islam and acquiring illegitimate wealth.
Zam, who reportedly lived in Paris, encouraged rioters to arm themselves and taught them how to make explosives via his news feed. Telegram shut down his channel following the deadly riots between December 28, 2017 and January 3, 2018 in Iran.
Zam was first arrested in October 2019 by the Intelligence Organization of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corp (IRGC).
His arrest had been made possible through a meticulous intelligence operation that involved outmaneuvering the intelligence services of certain Western countries, especially France, for which he used to spy.
The Foreign Ministry is also to summon the head of France’s diplomatic representation in the Islamic Republic concerning Paris’ earlier designation of the execution as a “barbarous and unacceptable act."
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