Iran on Monday executed an Iranian-born opponent of the government who had German citizenship and lived in the United States, the country’s judiciary announced, four years after Iranian agents abducted him in Dubai, according to members of his family.
Iranian authorities had accused the man, Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, of helping orchestrate a deadly terrorist bombing in Iran in 2008, a charge he and his family denied. Mr. Sharmahd was convicted in a trial that human rights groups and Western governments denounced as a sham.
Mr. Sharmahd had permanent U.S. residency and was living in California at the time of his seizure. He operated the website of Kingdom Assembly of Iran, a little-known group also known as Tondar, and made videos claiming that the group was arming people to fight against Iran. The group is committed to overthrowing the government in Tehran and restoring the monarchy, and it has taken responsibility for attacks in Iran.
The family of Mr. Sharmahd, who lived much of his life in Germany and had dual German and Iranian citizenship, has said that Iranian agents abducted him in 2020, when he was visiting Dubai. Iranian law enforcement said at the time that it had captured him in a “complex operation” but did not say where.
Ten years earlier, a man whom prosecutors called an Iranian agent pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to trying to hire someone to kill Mr. Sharmahd, but the reputed agent fled the United States before he could be sentenced.
While Iran has executed many opponents of the government, Mr. Sharmahd’s Western citizenship and residency made his case unusual and drew international attention. Iran has not often put dual citizens to death, but it executed two such dissidents last year: Alireza Akbari, a British Iranian citizen, and Habib Chaab, a Swedish Iranian, who was reported abducted in Turkey and taken to Iran.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the assassination of Jamshid Sharmahd by the Iranian regime,” Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said in a statement. “Jamshid Sharmahd was abducted from Dubai to Iran, held for years without a fair trial and now killed.”
She described the Iranian government as “a regime that uses the death penalty against its youth, its own people and foreign nationals.”
Asked about the case last year, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, referred questions to the German government but said, “The Iranian regime’s treatment of Mr. Sharmahd has been reprehensible.”
A more renowned Iranian prisoner, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, is seriously ill and has been hospitalized, her husband and human rights groups said on Monday, after the Iranian government withheld medical care from her for months.
“Narges’s heart vessel is blocked and needs to be treated,” her husband, Taghi Rahmani, who lives in France with their two children, said in a telephone interview on Monday. “She has a problem with her digestive system, and lumps were found in her breasts. But she was taken to the hospital five months later than the time of her initial request.”
He said she had not been allowed any visitors.
There were three earlier requests from her and her doctors to transfer her to a hospital starting 16 months ago, “each time obstructed by authorities,” according to a letter signed by hundreds of critics of the Iranian government, and released by a foundation named for Ms. Mohammadi. Her life is in serious danger, they said, accusing the Iranian leadership of trying to impose a “silent death” on her.
The Iranian authorities have made no public comment on Ms. Mohammadi’s condition or on allegations that she has been denied treatment.
“Just days before her imprisonment, Narges told me that she was facing serious health issues and, despite her lack of fear about going to jail, she doubted she could endure this sentence,” said Omid Memarian, the senior Iran analyst at DAWN, a group in Washington that advocates democracy and civil rights in the Middle East. He added, “It is abundantly clear that the security and prison authorities have deliberately obstructed her medical treatment to put pressure on her, a situation that could severely endanger Narges’s life.”
Ms. Mohammadi, 52, has spent most of the last decade locked up, primarily in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. She was sentenced multiple times for her outspoken activism on behalf of women, inmates and political protesters and for her criticism of the Iranian government.
A year ago, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which her teenage children accepted on her behalf.
Ms. Mohammadi underwent surgery in 2021 to open a blocked coronary artery and needs another, similar procedure, according to her allies. Such occlusions are a primary cause of heat attacks and strokes.
“Narges is entitled to be released from prison,” her husband said, “but if she is not going to be released, at least she should be given leave so that she can follow up her treatment better.”
On Saturday, the authorities added six months to her current, multiyear sentence, for her protest of the execution of another prisoner in August. Her lawyer said she was severely beaten for that protest but was denied medical treatment for her injuries.
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