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Iran executed German-Iranian dissident and longtime California resident Jamshid Sharmahd on Monday, October 28, under accusations of “planning and orchestrating a series of terrorist acts,” according to state-run media outlets.
Knewz.com has learned that Sharmahd was abducted by officials from Iran while he was traveling to India in 2020 and had a layover in Dubai.
Sharmahd was sentenced to death in 2022 after he was convicted of “corruption on Earth” in what the United States State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel described as a "sham trial."
The Mizan news agency, a media outlet affiliated with the judiciary of Iran, reported that Sharmahd was executed for being “under orders from masters in Western intelligence agencies, the United States and the child-killing Zionist regime.”
"Without a doubt, the divine promise regarding the supporters of terrorism will be fulfilled, and this is a definite promise," the Iranian judiciary said while announcing his execution, according to reports.
Sharmahd’s daughter Gazelle, who has been trying to rally support for her father's freedom ever since he was "arrested" in Dubai, accused the German and U.S. governments of failing her father following the execution.
She also said that her father's execution by Iran was a "retaliation (for) Israeli strikes on the [Iranian] regime."
She wrote in an Instagram post on Monday:
"As an American-German national was brutally and shamelessly kidnapped, tortured, held hostage for 4 years and (if confirmed) murdered by the biggest terrorist Organisation in the world, apparently for retaliation of Israeli strikes on the regime, this must have immediate and unmistakable grave consequences for them now."
"Where is our president? The VP? The secretary? The German chancellor? No call? Are you seriously still going to ignore our family and leave even my father’s presumed corpses defenseless in terrorist hands? We do not want any statements or condolences that do not include the immediate return of my father (dead or alive) and a severe punishment for the Islamic Regime murderers," she added.
One of the primary charges Iran's judiciary brought against the Glendora, California, resident was the alleged planning of the bombing of a mosque in the city of Shiraz in 2008 that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others.
He was also accused of "plotting several other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran — an opposition group seeking to restore the monarchy that was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979 — and its Tondar militant wing," according to reports.
Iran also accused him of “disclosing classified information” regarding the nation’s missile sites during a television program in 2017, it has been reported.
It is worth noting that his death sentence in 2022 sparked significant outrage among human rights groups and Western governments.
American State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson Patel said in a statement earlier in 2024, "He has been sentenced to death after a legal proceeding that has been widely criticized as a sham trial."
Human rights group Amnesty International also labeled Sharmahd's trial in Iran as "grossly unfair."
Gazelle, Sharmahd's daughter, has repeatedly claimed that her father faced a sham trial due to his political activism and criticism of Iran.
Speaking at the 16th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on May 15, she said:
"My dad Jimmy [Sharmahd's nickname reportedly used by friends and close ones] is spending his 1384th night somewhere inside of Iran in a torture chamber, as a hostage awaiting public execution. My dad didn’t live in Iran. He didn’t travel to Iran. He doesn’t hold an Iranian passport."
"Jimmy is a German-American journalist and activist, and he was kidnapped and taken to Iran by force to silence him and with him to silence the truth," she added.
She demanded that the Geneva Summit "on behalf of all hostages, political prisoners and victims of torture around the world, call on the UN and the free world to enact laws and resolutions to ban international kidnappings, tortures of hostages and extortion."
"These state sponsored terrorist regimes who are responsible for this human horror should face severe legal, financial, and economic consequences. Breaking such laws against cross-border kidnappings should be redefined as crimes against humanity," Gazelle stated at the time.
It is worth noting that German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock commented on Sharmahd's execution as well, labeling it "murder" and stating that it goes on to portray Iran as an “inhumane regime” that “uses death as a weapon.”
Baerbock also said that the execution would have “serious consequences.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller echoed Baerbock's statement regarding the execution, saying that Sharmahd's death “reminds us once again of the brutal brutality and repression that characterizes the Iranian regime.”