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Ayatollah Amjad Says Khamenei Responsible For ‘All Killings’ Since 2009
Ayatollah Mahmoud Amjad, an outspoken reformist seminary teacher, has said that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is responsible for “all the blood that was shed and people who were killed” since unrest following the disputed 2009 presidential election. In a speech posted live to Instagram on Tuesday evening [December 15] Amjad said that Khamenei “must stop his tyranny.”
Amjad also criticized Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior Shiite cleric based in Najaf, Iraq, for not condemning Iran’s December 12 execution of dissident journalist Rouhollah Zam. “I’m surprised about our behavior,” Amjad said. “They execute a young person unjustly and we say nothing”.
One of Zam’s lawyers told a Persian-language radio station in Holland in September that a member of Sistani’s office had lured Zam from France to Iraq with promises of meeting Sistani before Zam was abducted and transferred to Iran. On Monday Amjad’s son Mahmoud conveyed a message from his father calling Zam a martyr and his execution murder.
The 81-year-old Amjad is well versed in Islamic jurisprudence. He teaches ethics at Qom Seminary, the center of Iranian Shia Islam, and was once a student of the 1979 Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Hundreds of protesters have died at the hands of security forces in Iran since 2009, thousand jailed and some have died in prisons under suspicious circumstances or executed.
Zam, a founder of the Telegram channel Amad News, was according to his wife captured in Iraq in September 2019 by Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). He was put on trial in February and sentenced to death on charges including spying for Israeli and French intelligence, collaborating with the United States, and gathering classified information.
Zam's social media channels mainly distributed news and rumors about the internal affairs of the ruling elite and financial corruption. Once he revealed that a Koran reciter close to and trusted by Khamenei was a child molester, which led to a big scandal and legal investigations that led nowhere.
Zam’s father, Mohammad-Ali Zam, who is also a cleric and once a follower of Khamenei has alleged that an “extrajudicial force” was behind the execution, over-riding his son’s legal rights, including by imposing a timeframe precluding any appeal.
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