Jamshid Sharmahd

Jamshid Sharmahd (Persian: جمشید شارمهد; 23 March 1955 – 28 October 2024) was a German and Iranian journalist and software engineer.

A permanent resident of the United States from 2003, Sharmahd had been targeted by the Iranian government for his connections to Tondar, an Iranian opposition group engaging in violent attacks. Since his arrest by Iranian agents in 2020, Sharmahd was held in solitary confinement by Iran in a forced disappearance. In a 2023 trial condemned by Amnesty International, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the European Council, Sharmahd was sentenced to death.

Sharmahd was held in solitary confinement until his execution on 28 October 2024.

Biography

Jamshid Sharmahd was born in Tehran on 23 March 1955. When he was seven years old, he moved with his father to Hanover, West Germany, where he grew up in a German-Iranian household. 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 1983, he returned to West Germany with his wife and daughter. He was a Zoroastrian.

Sharmahd established his own software company and in 2003 moved to the United States, where he was a permanent resident with a green card. He had been living in Los Angeles, California since 2003. Sharmahd had Parkinson's disease.

In 2007, a "massive cyber attack" publicly exposed his contributions to the website of Tondar, a news platform and opposition movement viewed by Iran as a terrorist organization. This led to targeted harassment and assassination attempts against him by the Iranian government. In 2009, agents of the Islamic regime of Iran attempted an assassination of Sharmahd in Glendora, California, which was foiled by U.S. officials. This information was made public by a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable. Sharmahd helped operate Tondar's Los Angeles-based television and radio programming, and operated a satellite radio station accessible in Iran.

Kingdom Assembly of Iran

Sharmahd was a leader of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran which doesn't support the Pahlavi dynasty.

Sharmahd used to run the website for Kingdom Assembly of Iran.

Kidnapping in Dubai

In late July 2020, secret agents from Iran's Ministry of Intelligence abducted Sharmahd in Dubai, taking him to Iran. The Iranian government alleged that Sharmahd was responsible for a 2008 attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people and injured 200. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stated that "Mr. Sharmahd is being deprived of his liberty as a result of exercising the right to freedom of opinion and expression." Sharmahd and his family denied all charges. Sharmahd's abduction was one of a series of arrests carried out by the government of Iran.

In February 2023, Sharmahd was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran under charges of "corruption on earth" following a "grossly unfair trial", as described by Amnesty International. He was repeatedly denied access to the German consulate and access to trials. German Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock said Sharmahd "never had even the semblance of a fair trial." In response to the sentence, Germany expelled two Iranian diplomats.

In 2022, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) released a 13-page document confirming Sharmahd's arrest, forced disappearance, human rights violations, and torture. In January 2023, Friedrich Merz, the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, took over the political sponsorship for Sharmahd. Merz attempted to travel to Iran to verify the health of Sharmahd, but Iranian authorities denied him a visa. Merz repeatedly demanded the unconditional release of Sharmahd and "expects the German government to significantly step up its efforts to release Jamshid Sharmahd." 

In April 2023, the European Council publicly condemned the death sentence of Sharmahd.

Execution

Sharmahd was executed in Tehran on 28 October 2024, at the age of 69, on charges of terrorism. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the execution of Sharmahd and called it "a scandal."