One Year On, Iranian Dissident’s Execution Rattles Exiles

Ruhollah Zam was executed weeks after leaving France on a mysterious trip to Iraq - AFP
Ruhollah Zam was executed weeks after leaving France on a mysterious trip to Iraq - AFP
TT
20

One Year On, Iranian Dissident’s Execution Rattles Exiles

Ruhollah Zam was executed weeks after leaving France on a mysterious trip to Iraq - AFP
Ruhollah Zam was executed weeks after leaving France on a mysterious trip to Iraq - AFP

One year after dissident Ruhollah Zam was executed in Iran after apparently being lured from France, his hanging strikes fear into Iranian opposition exiles over the reach of the Islamic Republic.

Zam, the founder of a popular Telegram channel despised by the Iranian authorities for its use in November 2019 protests, was executed on December 12 last year just weeks after leaving France, where he had refugee status, on a mysterious trip to Iraq.

Colleagues say he was abducted in Iraq by Iranian forces, taken over the border, paraded on TV, forced to take part in a televised "confession", convicted and then hanged with astonishing speed, AFP reported.

Activists argue that his abduction and killing is part of a long history of reprisals carried out by Iran against opponents living outside its borders, dating back to the first months after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Friends of Zam remain baffled how a man described as passionate in his work and devoted to his daughter chose to make the risky journey to Iraq, a country with a major Iranian presence, and want answers from France over what happened.

Sepideh Pooraghaiee, an Iranian journalist living in exile in France who was a friend of Zam, told AFP that "many things are not clear. We do not know anything."

"We demand justice for a journalist who was assassinated and work to keep his memory intact."

The United For Zam association of friends and activists set up to keep his memory alive said that the French government "needed to clear up any ambiguities" about how Zam was abducted in Iraq.

Echoing frustration from activists that human rights are not part of the talks over the Iranian nuclear crisis, they called on France "to make negotiations with the Islamic Republic conditional on the cessation of killings and brutal repression of political dissidents".

- 'Seriously increasing risk' -

Campaigners accuse Iran of killing and abducting hundreds of opponents during the four decade since the royalist government of the shah was overthrown.

Among the most notorious was the knifing to death of the shah's last prime minister Shahpour Bakhtiar and his secretary outside Paris in August 1991.

An Iranian man, Ali Vakili Rad, was convicted of the killing but in 2010 was paroled by France and returned to Iran where he was given a hero's welcome.

The September 1992 killing of four Iranian Kurdish activists at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin resulted in a German arrest warrant for the Iranian intelligence minister and a crisis in relations between Iran and the West.

"The kidnapping and subsequent killing of Ruhollah Zam fits a decades-long pattern of intimidation, extrajudicial killings and abductions of dissidents by the Islamic Republic of Iran´s agents," said Roya Boroumand, executive director of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center.

The Center has counted more than 540 Iranians whose successful assassination or kidnapping have been attributed to Iran, with a peak reached in the 1990s with more than 397 killed including 329 in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Boroumand said that there had been a "slackening" of such activities after the international backlash that followed the Mykonos case.

But a growing number of cases "indicate a seriously increasing risk" for Iranian dissidents abroad.

She linked this to the growing number of web-based channels based abroad that have had an impact inside Iran -- like Zam's Amadnews -- especially during events such as the 2019 protests.

In July this year, US prosecutors charged four Iranians in absentia over a plot to kidnap the dissident Masih Alinejad from New York in a speedboat and take her to Tehran's ally Venezuela.

Alinejad, who has strongly campaigned against the obligatory hijab in Iran, is now part of a bipartisan US Senate effort to introduce legislation that would sanction those behind such attempts.

Now living in a safe house after the plot was foiled, Alinejad said: "Even here in America I do not have a normal life. I am not a criminal. My crime is just to give a voice to the voiceless protesters of Iran."



Rescuers Search for 19 Missing, Recover 9 Bodies after Nepal Flooding

Rescuers evacuate stranded people from the site of a mudslide at the Gyirong Port area in Gyirong Township of Xigaze, Xizang Autonomous Region, China, 08 July 2025. EPA/XINHUA / Xu Dafu
Rescuers evacuate stranded people from the site of a mudslide at the Gyirong Port area in Gyirong Township of Xigaze, Xizang Autonomous Region, China, 08 July 2025. EPA/XINHUA / Xu Dafu
TT
20

Rescuers Search for 19 Missing, Recover 9 Bodies after Nepal Flooding

Rescuers evacuate stranded people from the site of a mudslide at the Gyirong Port area in Gyirong Township of Xigaze, Xizang Autonomous Region, China, 08 July 2025. EPA/XINHUA / Xu Dafu
Rescuers evacuate stranded people from the site of a mudslide at the Gyirong Port area in Gyirong Township of Xigaze, Xizang Autonomous Region, China, 08 July 2025. EPA/XINHUA / Xu Dafu

Dozens of rescuers searched the banks of a mountain river Wednesday looking for people missing after monsoon floods swept away Nepal's main bridge connecting to the country to China and caused at least nine deaths.

Police said dozens of rescuers were already at the area and more are expected to join the rescue efforts. Nine dead bodies have been recovered from the river. Security forces have rescued 55 people, including four Indians and a Chinese person so far, according to the Rasuwa District Administration Office.

Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, along with top ministers and officials, flew to the area, The Associated Press reported. Oli called an emergency meeting Tuesday night and instructed all security forces and government offices to assist the rescue and recovery efforts.

The flooding on the Bhotekoshi River early Tuesday destroyed the Friendship Bridge at Rasuwagadi, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the capital, Kathmandu. Several houses and trucks that were parked at the border for customs inspections also were swept away. Hundreds of electric vehicles imported from China had been parked at the border point.

The 19 missing are 13 Nepali citizens and six Chinese nationals, said the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.

The Chinese and eight of the Nepalis were workers at a Chinese-assisted construction project on the Nepali side of the border, according to the Chinese Embassy in Nepal, quoted by state media.

The destruction of the bridge has halted all trade from China to Nepal through this route. The longer alternative is for goods to be shipped from China to India and then brought overland to Nepal.