The father of journalist Rouhollah Zam has said there was an “extrajudicial force” behind his son’s execution on Saturday [December 12] that over-rode his legal and Islamic rights. Mohammad-Ali Zam, a cleric with the rank of Hojjat ol-Eslam, and a former head of the Artistic School of the Islamic Propaganda Organization, a quasi-state body, has since his son’s execution published several posts on Instagram shedding light on the circumstances.

On Sunday, Zam pointed out that Iran’s regulations and laws were violated in carrying out the sentence. The short period between the Supreme Court confirming the death penalty on Tuesday December 8 and the execution four days later, Zam said, deprived his son of his right to ask the Chief Justice for a stay of execution and a retrial. “What extrajudicial force, a person or an entity was behind the rush for the haste in carrying out the execution?” he asked.

According to Iranian law, capital punishment can be stayed by the Chief Justice to be reinvestigated by a court of an equal standing and another judge. An example is the stay of the execution − after sentences had been confirmed by the Supreme Court − granted by Chief Justice Ebrahim Raeesi to three protestors on December 6.

Zam has pointed out that his son’s lawyer was not given enough time to take the legal steps needed to request the stay of the execution as government offices were closed on Thursday and Friday, leaving him just one day after it was announced that the Supreme Court had confirmed the death sentence.  Zam, who is well-known as a cleric, also wrote that his son had been deprived of the right to make a last testament, verbally to his family or in written form, as Islamic tradition requires.

In his Instagram posts, Zam has also declared that the authorities deceived his son about the imminence of his execution. A day before the execution and before the family met with him, prison officials told the family that Ruhollah should not be informed his sentence had been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Prison officials misled them into believing they would be able to visit him under better conditions after he was transferred from the ward at Evin Prison run by the Revolutionary Court, known as ward 2A, to a general ward.

The execution of Ruhollah Zam on Saturday stirred a reaction among human rights groups including Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders. While some Iranian exiles have attacked the European Union for a lack of action, the EU and several member states have joined Canada and the United States in condemning the execution.

Iranian authorities claim that such protests are unfounded and undermine Iranian sovereignty. Tehran summoned the ambassadors of Germany and France to the Foreign Ministry over the condemnations, jarring Iran’s international relations as the world awaits a diplomatic breakthrough between the West and Iran after Joe Biden’s victory in November’s US presidential election.

Iranian security forces allegedly lured Ruhollah Zam, who ran the anti-government Amadnews website during protests in 2017-18 before leaving for France, to Iraq last year where they rendered him and transferred him to Iran. He was put on trial in February on charges ranging from “spying for the intelligence agencies” of France and Israel, to “collaboration with the hostile United States government,” and “assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, participation in deceiving and provoking people to war and massacre, effectively persuading armed forces to mutiny, desert, surrender, or refuse to perform military duty.”