Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock met in the USA with the daughter of the German-Iranian Djamshid Sharmahd, who was sentenced to death in Iran. “I am deeply grateful to the German Foreign Minister (…) for taking the time on her trip to Washington DC to talk to us about my father Jimmy Sharmahd,” said daughter Gazelle Sharmahd on Friday (local time). Twitter successor platform X with. Baerbock did not want to comment on the content of the conversation.
Gazelle Sharmahd lives on the west coast of the USA; her father is one of several Germans imprisoned in Iran. Djamshid Sharmahd was sentenced to death on terror charges. It is feared that the death penalty will actually be carried out. His relatives vehemently deny the allegations against Sharmahd. Baerbock had called on those responsible in Tehran to reverse the “absolutely unacceptable” verdict.
Tension and rapprochement
This week, Baerbock spoke on the phone with Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian for the first time in a year and a half. The Foreign Office said Wednesday’s exchange covered a number of topics on which “different attitudes” were discussed. A particular focus of the Foreign Minister’s conversation, who is currently traveling to the USA, was on “German consular cases” – this refers to cases like Sharmahd’s in which German citizens abroad need the support of the Federal Republic.
Relations between Germany and Iran are tense. After the nationwide protests by the freedom movement in autumn 2022, Baerbock openly criticized the violent actions of the Iranian state against the demonstrators. In the meantime, the words from Tehran also became more severe. Iranian politicians have repeatedly accused the Federal Republic of interfering in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic.
Tweet Gazelle Sharmahd
