thetimes.co.uk
‘Honeytrap’ snares Iranian dissident Ruhollah Zam amid prisoner-swap rumours
Charles Bremner, Paris
5-6 minutes
October 16 2019, 5:00pm, The Times
Ruhollah Zam was paraded on Iranian state TV admitting to “counter-revolutionary” activity in France, where he lived for 12 years
A female agent working for Iranian intelligence is believed to have helped entrap and lure home an influential opponent of the regime who was living in Paris.
Ruhollah Zam, 46, a prominent activist who ran Amadnews, a French-based anti-regime online forum, was presented on Iranian television on Monday confessing to “counter-revolutionary” activity under the orders of France.
The operation to repatriate him is claimed to have had at least tacit approval from the French security services, as part of the exchange deal for the freedom of two French academics held by Tehran.
Fariba Adelkhah is being held in TehranTHOMAS ARRIVE/GETTY
The elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) boasted that he had been lured back in a “sophisticated and professional operation” involving a ruse which fooled western spy agencies. It appears that he was first lured to Iraq, from where he was snatched and taken into neighbouring Iran.
“This great operation demonstrates the defeat of enemies’ intelligence services,” said the IRG. Tehran television showed images of a blindfolded Mr Zam in the back of a car.
Mr Zam was imprisoned in Iran after the disputed 2009 presidential election but since settling in France, he has been a thorn in the flesh of the Tehran regime.
The French government yesterday “strongly condemned” the abduction at the weekend of Mr Zam, who had lived in Paris for 12 years and held refugee status but Le Figaro newspaper reported that the French secret service may have connived in an operation that was “worthy of a spy novel”.
Roland Marchal is also being held
“The Revolutionary Guards began by sending to him in Paris a young woman who apparently convinced him to go to Iraq to meet Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leader of Iraq’s Shia Muslims and great rival of Ali Khamenei, the head of the Iranian regime,” it wrote.
Iranian exiles and experts in Paris speculated that French intelligence may have enabled the Iranian snatch as a gesture to win the release of two French academics from Tehran prisons.
The aim would be to win the release of Fariba Adelkhah, a Franco-Iranian researcher, and Roland Marchal, a colleague and friend from the prestigious Paris Sciences-Po university. They have been held in IRG Guards prisons since June in what the French government deems to be a ploy to apply pressure on France.
The French foreign ministry today called for the immediate release of the two academics.
“We want the Iranian authorities to show transparency in this dossier and act without delay to end the unacceptable situation,” said the ministry spokeswoman.
Mr Zam’s wife, Mahsa Razani, told Middle Eastern agencies yesterday that he flew from Paris to Baghdad on Friday. “Since his arrival in Baghdad he did not answer my calls until he called me at dawn on Sunday and talked to me in a different way and said he was fine. Then I saw the news of his arrest from the Iranian media,” she said.
In Najaf, the Iraqi holy city, Ayatollah al-Sistani’s office yesterday denied that he had met Mr Zam.
“The journalist had no direct or indirect contact with this office and we have no information on his visit or arrival in Iraq,” said a spokesman.
Mr Zam’s channel, carried by Telegram, the encrypted messaging platform used by half the Iranian population, played a big part in a wave of anti-state protests that broke out around Iran in December 2017 and led to at least 25 deaths.
The Iranians prevailed last year on Telegram’s Russian owners to shut the Paris-based channel, whose name stood for Knowledge, Struggle and Democracy, on the grounds that he was fomenting armed revolt by its 1.4 million followers.
Mr Zam reopened it under a new name. The IRG posted news of the arrest of “one of the main people of the enemy’s media network and psychological warfare” on his new channel, which is followed by more than a million users.
France’s prisoner feud with Tehran, orchestrated by the IRG, has complicated President Macron’s efforts to broker a meeting between President Rouhani and Donald Trump to renew efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.
Paris is under pressure from Tehran not to agree to an American request for the extradition of an Iranian nuclear engineer who was arrested at Nice airport in February.
The French government last week advised citizens not to visit Iran for any reason “due to the arbitrary arrest and detention practices of the Iranian security and intelligence services”.
It added: “These services are . . . very intrusive, especially with regard to the contacts of foreign nationals with the population, notably for those in universities, who are the subject of a extra surveillance.”
Last edited:
