|
Iranian state media has reported that German Iranian national Jamishid Sharmahd, convicted last year has been executed to death.
The execution took place on Monday morning, as per state news agency IRNA, which described the 69-year-old as "Israeli-linked spy and saboteur." The US resident, Sharmahd was sentenced to death in February 2023 after being convicted by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court on charges linked to his involvement in the 2008 attack against a religious congregation centre in Iranian city of Shiraz in Fars Province that killed 14 people and injured 200 others. Iran's Supreme Court in April upheld the death sentence, which was handed to him in February on charges of "corruption on earth" by planning and orchestrating a series of terrorist acts against the Islamic Republic, Irna reported. Tehran had accused Sharmahd of being the "ringleader of the terrorist Tondar 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." Iranian Judiciary's Mizan news agency cited a statement by the Tehran Prosecutor-General's Office on Monday. "At the behest of his masters in Western intelligence agencies, Sharmahd has for years designed numerous terrorist operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran," the statement said as cited by state media Press TV. He was believed to have been kidnapped in Dubai and subsequently detained in Iran. Sharmahd's daughter, Gazelle, in a post on Instagram on Monday has accused the German and US government of failing her father, and described his reported death as "apparently retaliation (for) Israeli strikes on the regime," CNN reported. Israel conducted multiple strikes on Iran on October 26 in retaliation for Iran's attack on it earlier this month. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned "the murder" of the dual national Sharmahd "in the strongest possible terms." "Jamshid Sharmahd has been kidnapped from Dubai to Iran, held for years without a fair trial and has now been killed," she said, adding that the German Embassy in Tehran and her ministry have been working hard on his case, including sending high-ranking delegations to Tehran. "We made it clear to Tehran time after time that executing a German national would have serious consequences," she said in an online post. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on X also condemned the execution of Sharmahd calling it "a scandal." The United States State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the US condemned Iran's execution of German-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd, "the latest case in the regime's history of transnational repression and disregard of human rights." "We stand with Germany, the Sharmahd family, and the international community to hold the regime accountable," he said in a statement. The United States' Office of the Special Envoy for Iran said that Sharmahd's "kidnapping and rendition, as well as sham trial and reports of torture, were reprehensible." (ANI)
|
