Iran Kidnaps and Executes Ex-Pat Jamshid Sharmahd

In 2020, Iranian agents kidnapped Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, an Iranian-born software developer who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, during his visit to the United Arab Emirates. The kidnappers ignored not only UAE law but also the fact that Sharmahd was a legal resident of California and a German citizen. In February 2023, an Iranian court sentenced him to death on charges of endangering national security. On Monday morning, two days after the humiliating Israeli attack on 20 Iranian military bases and manufacturing plants, Sharmahd was executed.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that Sharmahd was “the ringleader of the US-based Tondar terrorist group, who for years planned numerous terrorist operations against the Islamic Iran, at the behest of his masters in Western, American, and child-killing Zionist spy organizations.”

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) strongly condemned the execution, saying “This state-sanctioned killing targeted a dissident who was unjustly detained, tortured, and deprived of his due process and fair trial rights.”

Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI, said, “By executing Jamshid Sharmahd, the Islamic Republic has once again shown its contempt for human rights and due process and its willingness to carry out state-sanctioned murder to silence dissent. This brutal killing is intended to send a message of terror to Iranians abroad and to the international community.”

Jamshid Sharmahd was born in Tehran in 1955, and at age 7 moved with his father to Hanover, West Germany. He has been a German citizen since 1995. He studied to become an electrician, and in 1980 briefly returned to Iran where he got married. In 1982, he returned to West Germany with his wife and daughter. He established a software company and in 2003 moved to Los Angeles, where he attained a green card.

At some point, Sharmahd was contacted by Tondar, a monarchist Iranian news outlet considered by Iran to be a terrorist organization. After a cyber-attack exposed his ties to Tondar, Iran began a campaign of harassment and even assassination attempts against him. In 2009, Iranian agents tried to kill him in Glendora, California but were stopped by US law enforcement. Sharmahd later helped operate Tondar’s LA-based television and radio programming and operated a satellite radio station that can be received in Iran.

Amnesty International pointed out that Sharmahd “was convicted of the charge of ‘corruption on earth’ which is not clearly defined in law, and as such contravenes the principle of legality,” calling his trial “grossly unfair.”

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