{"id":79129,"date":"2020-02-11T14:40:27","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T19:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=79129"},"modified":"2020-04-05T09:03:32","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T14:03:32","slug":"iran-opposition-figure-faces-death-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/02\/11\/iran-opposition-figure-faces-death-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Opposition Figure Faces Death Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-79132 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/AmadNeuwsWEBzam-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/>VOA &#8211; TEHRAN &#8211; An Iranian opposition figure who had been living in exile before being arrested faces the death sentence, the opening day of his trial heard Monday, according to the judiciary&#8217;s website. Ruhollah Zam, 41, went on trial &#8220;behind closed doors and in the absence of the media,&#8221; Fars news agency said. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the arrest of Zam in October last year, describing him as a &#8220;counter-revolutionary&#8221; who was &#8220;directed by France&#8217;s intelligence service.&#8221; It did not specify where he was arrested.<\/p>\n<p>Zam, who reportedly lived in Paris, ran a channel on the Telegram messaging app called Amadnews.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, he was accused by authorities of playing an active role in anti-government protests sparked by economic hardship during the winter of 2017-18.<\/p>\n<p>Telegram shut down Amadnews in 2018 after Iran demanded it remove the account for inciting an &#8220;armed uprising.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At Monday&#8217;s court hearing, the prosecution read Zam&#8217;s indictment containing 15 counts, said Fars, which is close to ultra-conservatives.<\/p>\n<p>Zam&#8217;s indictment, published later on the judiciary&#8217;s Mizan Online website, said he was accused of &#8220;corruption on earth&#8221; &#8212; a crime punishable by death.<\/p>\n<p>Among the other charges, he was suspected of having &#8220;committed offences against the country&#8217;s internal and external security&#8221; and &#8220;espionage for the French intelligence service.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He was also accused of having insulted &#8220;the sanctity of Islam.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VOA &#8211; TEHRAN &#8211; An Iranian opposition figure who had been living in exile before being arrested faces the death sentence, the opening day of his trial heard Monday, according to the judiciary&#8217;s website. Ruhollah Zam, 41, went on trial &#8220;behind closed doors and in the absence of the media,&#8221; Fars news agency said. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}