Iran says German-Iranian died before execution was reported

Iran’s judiciary has said Iranian-German dissident Jamshid Sharmahd died before his execution was reported by state media late last month.

The judiciary’s news agency said on 28 October that Sharmahd – who was sentenced to death on the charge of “corruption on Earth” in 2023 following a trial that human rights groups said was grossly unfair – had been “punished for his actions”.

On Tuesday, judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told reporters that “his sentence was ready to be implemented, but he died before the sentence was carried out”. He gave no further details.

There was no immediate comment from Sharmahd’s daughter Gazelle, who had demanded proof of his execution, or from Germany.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock ordered the closure of all three Iranian consulates in her country and recalled the German ambassador from Tehran last week in response to what she condemned as the “cold-blooded murder” of Sharmahd.

Mr Jahangir dismissed Germany’s protest at Tuesday’s news conference, insisting that Iran’s judicial system was “an independent institution” and that it did “not allow any interference of any foreign country in judicial affairs”.

He also said that Sharmahd, who lived in the US, had been tried “as an Iranian for the terrorist actions that he committed”.

On Sunday, Sharmahd’s family said they were waiting for German and the US to confirm what had happened to him.

“Please know that we do not accept condolences until we have received evidence by the German and American authorities of the reported murder of my father Jimmy Sharmahd and the exact circumstances,” his daughter Gazelle Sharmahd wrote on X.

“We do not trust the empty words of terrorist or complicit governments and neither should you.”

Iranian authorities accused the 69-year-old journalist and activist of being the leader of a terrorist group known as Tondar and of planning a number of attacks in Iran, including the 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz in that killed 14 people.

Tondar – which means “thunder” in Persian – is another name of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran (KAI), a little-known US-based opposition group that seeks to restore the monarchy overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Sharmahd said he was only a spokesman for Tondar and denied any involvement in the attacks.

His family believe he was kidnapped in July 2020 by Iranian agents in Dubai, where he was waiting for a connecting flight to India, and then forcibly taken to Iran via Oman.

The following month, Iran’s intelligence ministry announced that it had arrested Sharmahd following a “complex operation”, without providing any details. It also published a video in which he appeared blindfolded and seemingly confessed to various crimes.

Iran’s judiciary also announced on Tuesday that a court in the north-western city of Orumiyeh had handed death sentences to three people convicted of involvement in the 2020 assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Fakhrizadeh was shot dead by a remote-controlled weapon near Tehran in an attack that Iran blamed on Israel.

Mr Jahangir said the three people were accused of “committing espionage for the occupying regime of Israel” and “transporting equipment into Iran for the assassination of martyr Fakhrizadeh under the guise of smuggling alcoholic beverages”.