Daughter of Iranian-German sentenced to death in Tehran urges action from Berlin and Washington

The daughter of the Iranian-German dissident, Jamshid Sharmahd, who is sentenced to death in Iran, urged the US and Germany to join forces to free him.

The Sharmahd family says that Jamshid was kidnapped by the Iranian security services while travelling through the UAE in July 2020, and transported by land across the border to Oman and, from there, to Iran.

Sharmahd, whose arrest was announced in August 2020, was sentenced to death for his supposed involvement in a terrorist attack on a mosque in 2008 in Shiraz in southern Iran, which killed 14 people. His family rejects all charges against him.

Sharmahd, a software developer, is also accused of helping to create a website for an exiled Iranian opposition group known as Tondar, which Tehran considers to be a terrorist group.

Sharmahd immigrated to Germany in the 1980s, before moving to reside in the US.

His daughter, Ghazala Sharmahd, who lives in California, told AFP, on the side-lines of a round table organised by the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), that “what I ask of the US and Germany is to release my father, return him and save his life.”

She stressed earlier, during her speech, that this “is a matter of life or death”, noting that she feels frustrated because Berlin and Washington do not see the “urgency” of the situation, and they are throwing the ball to each other to avoid responsibility. 

Ghazala Sharmahd met with US officials, after a sit-in outside the State Department organised by her several days ago to draw attention to her father’s case, following the deal reached by President Joe Biden’s administration to release five American citizens imprisoned in Iran.

READ: Leader of US-based ‘terrorist’ group abducted by Iran in Dubai, says family 

Ghazala considered that, while the German authorities confirm that they are “committed at the highest level”, this only aims to ensure her father has “better conditions in prison.”

“Does he need a better toothpaste before they kill him?”  she asked. (…) Does he need a book before they hang him?”

However, Berlin confirms that efforts are being made to save him.

A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry told AFP recently, “We continue to advocate intensively for Jamshid Sharmahd, and against the implementation of the death penalty against him.”

“Our goal is to prevent executions. We are resorting to all channels to achieve this,” he added, noting that Sharmahd’s family “is experiencing things that cannot be imagined or tolerated. We have been in constant contact with them since the beginning and continue to do everything we can to ensure that things do not go to the extreme.”

A spokesman for the US State Department said that his country found the Iranian regime’s treatment of Sharmahd “reprehensible”, but that he is a German citizen, and it is up to Germany to speak up for him.