A senior Iranian officer has claimed that the Revolutionary Guards had abducted “Amad News” director and dissident blogger Ruhollah Zam, who was executed by authorities last year, in an arrangement with the French intelligence services.
Speaking to the Iranian news site Event-24, Akbar Khoskhushk claimed that the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency, had agreed to an exchange deal in which the Iranian journalist is swapped for help in releasing a French officer who was captured by pro-Iran militias in Syria.
Zam had lived in Paris for years with his wife and two daughters before he was lured to Baghdad, Iraq in October 2019.
Expecting an interview with a powerful religious cleric, he was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Guards and taken to a detention center in Syria, then to Iran, where the Revolutionary Court sentenced him to death. Reports say he was hanged on December 12, 2020.
Khoshkushk, a former security official, said the IRGC was enabled in the plot by the DGSE, which was seeking the release of a French officer “captured by the forces of resistance” – Iran, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah – while infiltrating ISIS.
“The French security services called the Iranian service,” said Khoskhushk. “Follow-ups by the Iranian side revealed that the person requested by the French intelligence service was not a low-level agent but a high-ranking official.”
In exchange, Khoskhushk claimed, French security agents monitored Zam’s movements on the journey from Paris to Baghdad, then alerted the IRGC when Zam came to the French embassy in the Iraqi capital.
He then went to Najaf in Iraq where he was apprehended and taken to the border, he added.
“When Ruhollah Zam crossed the Iranian border and entered the country,” he said, “the French security officer was transferred from Damascus to Istanbul, where he was handed over to the French.”
