DUBAI – Iranian-German prisoner Jamshid Sharmahd, who was kidnapped in Dubai in 2020 by Iranian security forces, has been executed in Iran after being convicted on disputed terror charges, the country's judiciary reported Monday.
Sharmahd, 69, was one of several Iranian dissidents abroad in recent years either tricked or kidnapped back to Iran as Tehran began lashing out after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
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Sharmahd's execution comes just two days after Israel launched a retaliatory strike against Iran amid the ongoing Mideast wars. While not directly linking his execution to the attack, the judiciary accused him of being “under orders from masters in Western intelligence agencies, the United States and the child-killing Zionist regime” when allegedly plotting attacks in Iran.
Sharmahd had lived in California
The judiciary's Mizan news agency reported his execution took place Monday morning, without offering details. Iran, one of the world's top executioners, typically hangs condemned prisoners before sunrise.
Iran accused Sharmahd, who lived in Glendora, California, of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people — including five women and a child — and wounded over 200 others, as well as plotting other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing.
Iran also accused Sharmahd of “disclosing classified information” on missile sites of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard during a television program in 2017.
“Without a doubt, the divine promise regarding the supporters of terrorism will be fulfilled, and this is a definite promise,” the judiciary said in announcing his execution. Sharmahd was sentenced to death in 2023.
His family disputed the allegations and had worked for years to see him freed.
Sharmahd’s daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, criticized both Germany and the U.S. for failing him in a post on the social platform X. She said she had no proof her father had been executed and called for his body to be immediately returned if he had so his family could bury him per Zoroastrian customs.
“This must have immediate and unmistakable grave consequences for them now,” she wrote of Iran, which she described as executing her father “apparently for retaliation of Israeli strikes on the regime.”
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American activist who U.S. prosecutors say Iran also has tried to kill in the U.S., praised Sharmahd's daughter Gazelle's activism for her father.
“The Islamic Republic understands no language of peace or diplomacy," Alinejad wrote on X. “Their language is that of hostage-taking, execution, assassination and murder.”
Germany, U.S. rebuke Iran for execution
Germany expelled two Iranian diplomats in 2023 over Sharmahd's death sentence. The U.S. State Department has referred to Iran's treatment of Sharmahd as “reprehensible” and described him as facing a “sham trial.”
His death marks “the latest case in the regime’s history of transnational repression and disregard of human rights,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller wrote on X. “We stand with Germany, the Sharmahd family, and the international community to hold the regime accountable.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned "the murder of Jamshid Sharmahd by the Iranian regime in the strongest possible terms.” Sharmahd “was abducted to Iran from Dubai, held for years without a fair trial and has now been killed,” she said in a statement.
“We made it crystal clear to Tehran time and again that the execution of a German national would have severe consequences,” Baerbock said. She didn’t elaborate on what those might be.
Amnesty International said the proceedings against Sharmahd had been a “grossly unfair trial” because he had been denied access to an independent lawyer and “the right to defend himself.”
“The government-appointed lawyer said that without payment of $250,000 from the family, he would not defend Jamshid Sharmahd in court and would only 'sit there,'” Amnesty said in one report on his case.
However, Amnesty noted that Sharmahd ran a website for the Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing that included claims of "responsibility for explosions inside Iran,” though he repeatedly denied being involved in the attacks.
Sharmahd had been targeted by Iran prior to his kidnapping. A 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks identified Sharmahd as having been targeted by Iran in California, with an operative allegedly trying to hire a hitman to kill him. That operative later escaped the U.S. before trial.
“It marks a clear escalation in the regime’s attempts to intimidate critics outside its borders, and could have a chilling effect on journalists, academics and others in the West who until recently felt little physical threat from the regime,” the cable read.
Sharmahd was kidnapped in Dubai in 2020
Sharmahd had been in Dubai in 2020, trying to travel to India for a business deal involving his software company. He hoped to get a connecting flight despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic disrupting global travel at the time.
Sharmahd’s family received the last message from him on July 28, 2020. It’s unclear how the abduction happened. But tracking data showed Sharmahd’s mobile phone traveled south from Dubai to the city of Al Ain on July 29, crossing the border into Oman. On July 30, tracking data showed the mobile phone traveled to the Omani port city of Sohar, where the signal stopped.
Two days later, Iran announced it had captured Sharmahd in a “complex operation.” The Intelligence Ministry published a photograph of him blindfolded. A 2022 finding by the United Nations expert found that Sharmahd's detention by Iran was “arbitrary” and asked Tehran to immediately release him.
Sharmahd is the latest dissident put to death by Iran after being brought back to the country.
In 2020, Iran executed Ruhollah Zam, an exiled journalist over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, after tricking him into traveling to Iran.
In 2023, Iran executed Iranian-Swedish dual national Farajollah Cha’ab, who had been accused of masterminding a 2018 attack on a military parade that killed at least 25 people and who also had been seized abroad in Turkey. The same year, Iran also executed former high-ranking defense ministry official and dual Iranian-British national Ali Reza Akbari.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.