Iranian authorities on Monday executed German-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd, who had been detained since 2020, the judiciary’s Mizan Web site said, while Berlin called the execution a “scandal” and warned of “serious consequences” for Iran’s “inhumane regime.”
“After going through the judicial process and the final approval of the court decision by the Supreme Court, the death sentence of Jamshid Sharmahd ... was carried out this morning,” the Web site said, following Sharmahd’s conviction for “corruption on Earth.”
Sharmahd, a German citizen of Iranian descent in his late 60s, was seized by Iranian authorities in August 2020 while traveling through the United Arab Emirates, his family said.
Photo: AP
Iran, which does not recognize dual citizenship, announced his arrest after a “complex operation,” without specifying how, where or when he was seized.
Sharmahd was sentenced to death in February last year for the capital offense of “corruption on Earth,” a sentence later confirmed by the Supreme Court in the Islamic republic.
He had been convicted of playing a role in a 2008 mosque bombing in the southern city of Shiraz, in which 14 people were killed and 300 wounded.
Sharmahd was also accused of leading the Tondar group that reportedly aims to topple Iran’s government, which calls it a “terrorist” organization.
Mizan said that Sharmahd was “a criminal terrorist” who “was hosted by American and European countries, and was operating under the complex protection of their intelligence services.”
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock said that the killing “shows once again what kind of inhumane regime rules in Tehran: a regime that uses death against its youth, its own population and foreign nationals.”
Berlin had repeatedly made it clear “that the execution of a German national would have serious consequences,” Baerbock said.
“This underlines the fact that no one is safe under the new government either,” she said in reference to the administration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was inaugurated in July.
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