Iran announced Sharmahd’s arrest in August 2020. According to his family, the 67-year-old German-Iranian, who last lived in the United States, was kidnapped by the Iranian secret service during a stopover in Dubai and taken to Iran. His trial began in February 2022.
In particular, the Iranian judiciary accuses Sharmahd of being involved in an attack on a mosque in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz in April 2008, which killed 14 people.
According to “Misan Online”, citing court documents, Sharmahd is said to have been involved in the planning of a total of 23 attacks. He is also said to have been in contact with FBI and CIA agents and tried to establish contacts with the Israeli secret service Mossad.
Supporters of Sharmahd in Germany denied the allegations and called on the federal government to prevent his sentence to the death penalty and thus save his life. Sharmahd can still appeal his conviction to Iran’s Supreme Court, according to Misan Online.
Born in Tehran, Sharmahd grew up in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 2003. He belongs to the opposition group Tondar (English: Thunder), also known as the “Kingdom Assembly of Iran”. She rejects the political system of the Islamic Republic of Iran and supports the reintroduction of the monarchy in the country.
Amnesty expressed shock at the death sentence. “The trial of Jamshid Sharmahd was a show trial that has nothing to do with the rule of law,” said Katja Müller-Fahlbusch, Middle East expert at Amnesty International in Germany. Iran has denied him numerous rights, including the free choice of a lawyer.
Müller-Fahlbusch explained that his family had had almost no contact with him for more than two years and also did not know in which prison he was being held. He was denied adequate medical care while in detention and was believed to have been tortured.
The human rights policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Peter Heidt, explained that the actions against Sharmahd show the “incomprehensible harshness and inhumanity of this regime, which apparently does not shy away from any form of brutality to secure its power”. The federal government must work “resolutely” for his release.
