Iran's judiciary said Tuesday it had upheld a death sentence for Ruhollah Zam, a former opposition figure who had lived in exile in France and was implicated in anti-government protests.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the arrest of Zam in October last year, calling him a "counter-revolutionary" who was "directed by France's intelligence service".
He was charged with "corruption on earth" — one of the most serious offences under Iranian law — and sentenced to death in June.
"The supreme court handled the case more than a month ago," Iran's judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters Tuesday.
It "upheld the ruling issued by the Revolutionary Court," he added, speaking at a videoconference.
Zam, who reportedly lived in Paris, ran a channel on the Telegram messaging application Amadnews.
At the time, he was accused by authorities of playing an active role in anti-government protests sparked by economic hardship in December 2017 and the following month.
At least 25 people were killed during the unrest.
Telegram shut down Amadnews after Iran demanded it remove the account for inciting an "armed uprising".
According to Zam's indictment published in February, he was accused of having "committed offences against the country's internal and external security" and "espionage for the French intelligence service", as well as "corruption on earth".
He was also accused of having insulted the "sanctity of Islam".
Amnesty International condemned the upholding of Zam's sentence, describing it on Twitter as "a shocking escalation in Iran's use of the death penalty as a weapon of repression".
The rights group called for "urgent action" by the EU's foreign and security policy arm to press the supreme leader into quashing the sentence.
