For three years, Jamshid Sharmahd’s family has been plagued by constant anguish, watching for the slightest news, while fearing the worst for this German of Iranian origin on death row in Iran.
The 68-year-old Sharmahd was captured in late July 2020 by Iranian authorities and sentenced to death in February, a judgment upheld by the country’s Supreme Court.
He was tried for having participated, according to Iranian justice, in an attack against a mosque in Shiraz, in the south of Iran, which had left 14 dead and 300 injured in April 2008. His family rejects all charges.
This software developer had helped create a website for an Iranian opposition group in exile known as Tondar and considered “terrorist” by Tehran. During his trial, he was found guilty of “corruption on earth”, one of the most serious charges in Iran.
According to his family, Mr. Sharmahd, who had immigrated to Germany in the 1980s before settling in the United States, was abducted by Iranian security forces in the United Arab Emirates, before being taken to Iran, in transiting through Oman.
Iran then reported a “complex operation”, without ever specifying the circumstances of its capture.
Amnesty International denounced an “enforced disappearance” followed by a “manifestly unfair trial” and acts of torture.
About 20 people gathered outside the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin on Monday afternoon to mark the third anniversary of the announcement of his capture. The demonstrators held signs saying “Free Jamshid” and “Stop the executions”.
His family does not know where Mr. Sharmahd is being held and is asking the authorities to do more to obtain his release.
“There is no pressure. A German citizen has been kidnapped and it is as if nothing has happened,” laments his daughter Gazelle, who lives in the United States, to AFP.
Berlin assures on the contrary “to use all the channels” and “to engage with all (its) forces” to “prevent the execution” of Jamshid Sharmahd, told AFP a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Her family “is going through unimaginable and intolerable things”, adds this spokesperson who assures that the ministry has been “in permanent contact with her from the start”.
In early July, Mr. Sharmahd was allowed to call his wife, also living in the United States, for the first time in five months.
He was also allowed to speak to his daughter, whom he had not spoken to for two years. Gazelle Sharmahd describes an hour-long conversation with her father whose voice was “broken” and sounded “tired”.
“Phone calls are great, but they’re also a worry,” she said.
“They (the Iranians) still have a goal. Was it to silence us before they execute it? Was it goodbye?” she said.
Although most foreign prisoners are detained in Evin prison in Tehran, no information has leaked out as to the possible presence of Mr. Sharmahd in this penitentiary establishment.
Fears for his life have grown since Iran earlier this year executed Iranian-Swedish dissident Habib Chaab, also convicted of ‘corruption on earth’ and who Amnesty says was kidnapped in Turkey in October 2020 to stand trial in Iran.
Another Swedish-Iranian citizen, academic Ahmadreza Djalali, arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to death on similar charges in 2017, remains at risk of hanging.
Gazelle Sharmahd said she was pleased with Iran’s release of Western detainees, such as Belgian humanitarian Olivier Vandecasteele, released in exchange for an Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, convicted in Belgium in 2021 of “attempted terrorist assassinations “to 20 years in prison.
Two Austrians and a Dane were released a few days later by Tehran under an agreement brokered by Oman.
But these releases also left a bitter taste for Gazelle Sharmahd. “When you free some hostages but not all, it’s a good deal for Iran,” she lamented, denouncing a lack of coordination on a European scale.
“It is inhumane to leave behind people sentenced to death,” she said.
Her hopes for an eventual swap for her father’s release are now tied to Sweden, where a former Iranian official, Hamid Nouri, was convicted and imprisoned for mass executions of opposition figures in the late 1990s. 1980.
07/31/2023 17:47:17 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
