TIMES OF ISRAEL
An Iranian court on Tuesday sentenced to death on terror charges an Iranian-German national who supporters say was abducted in the Gulf and forcibly returned to Iran for a show trial.
The Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted Jamshid Sharmahd in connection with the deadly bombing of a mosque in 2008, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported.
Iranian authorities announced in August 2020 that Sharmahd, 67, who is also a German national and a US resident, was arrested in what they described as a “complex operation” without specifying how, where or when he was seized.
His family says that he was abducted by the Iranian security services while in transit in Dubai and then brought under duress to Iran.
“They kidnapped Jamshid Sharmahd and now they’ve sentenced him to death after a sham trial,” said the head of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam.
“Basically the Islamic republic is threatening to kill a hostage,” he added.
German opposition MP and foreign affairs committee member Norbert Roettgen tweeted that “he was kidnapped by the regime in Iran and now sentenced to death also to put pressure on Germany.”
“The government must now make it unmistakably clear that they do not accept this arbitrary judgment and are fighting for the life,” he wrote on Twitter.
‘Scapegoating my dad’
Sharmahd is accused by Iran of leading the Tondar group which aims to topple the Islamic republic and is outlawed as a terrorist organization by Iran.
Mizan said Sharmahd planned to commit 23 “terrorist” acts, of which he succeeded in five, including the bombing of a mosque in the southern city of Shiraz on April 12, 2008, which killed 14 people and wounded 300 others.
Prosecutors had also accused Sharmahd of having established contact with “FBI and CIA officers” and of having “attempted to contact Israeli Mossad agents.”
In 2009, Iran convicted and hanged three men for the Shiraz bombing, claiming they had links to the monarchist group and had taken their orders from “an Iranian CIA agent” based in the US in an attempt to assassinate a senior official in Iran.
Sharmahd’s family has ridiculed the charges.
“All of the charges are fabricated charges. They are scapegoating my dad who is innocent,” his daughter Gazelle told AFP when his trial got underway last year.
