Iran summons EU envoys for protesting reporter’s hanging

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran on Sunday summoned the German and French envoys to Tehran after the European Union condemned the execution of an Iranian journalist whose work helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, Iranian state media reported.

IRNA said an Iranian Foreign Ministry official summoned the ambassadors because of EU statements on the exiled reporter Ruhollah Zam, 47, who was hanged on Saturday.

Zam had been jailed in Iran after Iranian authorities seized him while he was traveling in neighboring Iraq last year. Zam had been living in exile in France before his kidnapping.

The German Foreign Ministry on Saturday expressed its shock about the circumstances of Zam’s sentencing and what it described as his “abduction from abroad” and forced return to Iran.

“This is a barbarous and unacceptable act,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which condemned the hanging as a “grave blow” to freedom of speech in Iran.

Iranian state television referred to Zam as “the leader of the riots” in announcing his execution by hanging early Saturday.

Hundreds of Nigerian students missing after attack on school

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Hundreds of Nigerian students are missing after gunmen attacked a secondary school in the country’s northwestern Katsina state, police said, while the president said the military was in gunfights with bandits in a forest as it tried to find the students.

The Government Science Secondary School in Kankara was attacked Friday night by a large group of bandits who shot “with AK-47 rifles,” Katsina State police spokesman Gambo Isah said in a statement.

Police engaged the attackers “in a gunfight that gave (some of) the students the opportunity to scale the fence of the school and run for safety,” Isah said.

About 400 students are missing, while 200 are accounted for, Isah said. The school is believed to have had more than 600 students.

“The police, Nigerian Army and Nigerian Air Force are working closely with the school authorities to ascertain the actual number of the missing and/or kidnapped students,” said Isah. “Search parties are working with a view to find or rescue the missing students.”