German-Iranian national and longtime US resident executed in Iran

A German-Iranian national and longtime US resident has been executed in Iran after being convicted of terrorism offences, according to Iranian state media citing the country’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency.

Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, was executed Monday morning for “planning and orchestrating a series of terrorist acts,” state-run IRNA and Press TV reported. His execution sparked condemnation from the United States and Germany.

Sharmahd’s daughter Gazelle has repeatedly said her father is innocent and that he faced a sham trial due to his political activism and criticism of the Islamic Republic.

Sharmahd was arrested in 2020 by Iranian authorities who claimed he headed a group accused of a deadly 2008 bombing in the city of Shiraz, according to state-run news agencies ISNA and IRNA.

He was sentenced to death in 2022 for “corruption on Earth”, sparking widespread condemnation from human rights groups and Western governments.

“He has been sentenced to death after a legal proceeding that has been widely criticized as a sham trial,” Vedant Patel, the US State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson said in a briefing last fall. Amnesty International also described the trial as “grossly unfair.”

Following the news of his execution, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said that Sharmahd’s “murder” showed Tehran to be an “inhumane regime” that “uses death as a weapon.”

Baerbock said the execution would have “serious consequences.”

The United States’ Office of the Special Envoy for Iran said it was looking into reports of Sharmahd’s execution and said his killing would “represent the latest abhorrent act in the regime’s long history of transnational repression and accelerating rate of executions.”

Sharmahd’s “kidnapping and rendition, as well as sham trial and reports of torture, were reprehensible,” the envoy’s office added.

Abram Paley, the US Deputy Special Envoy, last year met with Sharmahd’s family to discuss his imprisonment and death sentence.