TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran’s judiciary on Tuesday said it had upheld a death sentence for Ruhollah Zam, who had lived in France and was implicated in deadly riots in the Islamic Republic in late December 2017.
The Islamic Revolution Guards 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 Gholamhussein 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, encouraging rioters to arm themselves and teaching them how to make explosives.  
Telegram shut down his channel Amadnews after the foreign-backed riots between December 28, 2017 and January 3, 2018 left 25people dead.
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”, alongside "corruption on earth”.
He was also accused of having insulted the "sanctity of Islam”.