Jamshid Sharmahd

Jamshid Sharmahd (; 23 March 1955 – 28 October 2024) was a German national and software engineer, based in Los Angeles, California. A permanent resident of the United States from 2003, Sharmahd had been targeted by the Iranian government for his connections to Tondar, an Iranian monarchist group engaging in violent attacks. He was abducted by Iranian agents in a forced disappearance in 2020. In a 2023 trial condemned by Amnesty International, Germany, the United States, and the European Council, Sharmahd was sentenced to death. He was held in solitary confinement until his execution on 28 October 2024. He was Zoroastrian. 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 became a naturalized German citizen in 1995. After moving to the U.S., Sharmahd resided in the Los Angeles area, living in Glendora, California. Sharmahd had Parkinson's disease. a news platform and monarchist opposition movement. Among the array of Iranian opposition groups, Tondar is considered obscure. Although his work was intended to be uncredited, a technical error led to the exposure of Sharmahd's name on the public platform.

Members of the group in California feared reprisal from Iranian agents, and Tondar's former office in Los Angeles was twice burglarized. Sadeghnia's lawyer denied that his client was an Iranian agent, Sharmahd had been in Dubai, where he had been awaiting a connecting flight to India, when he was kidnapped. His last message to his family was received on 28 July 2020.

The Iranian government alleged that Sharmahd was responsible for a 2008 attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people and injured 200; it also claimed that in 2017 he had revealed "classified information" on Revolutionary Guard missile sites. Sharmahd denied all charges, and his family campaigned for his release. Sharmahd's abduction was one of a series of kidnapping plots orchestrated by the Iranian government against dissidents,

Forced disappearance and execution in Iran In February 2023, Sharmahd was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran on charges of "corruption on earth by planning and directing terrorist attacks." The Iranian Supreme Court upheld the death sentence on 26 April 2023. Amnesty International condemned the trial as grossly unfair, reporting that Iranian authorities had tortured Sharmahd while he was in detention, held him in solitary confinement for extended periods, and denied him access to his Parkinson's disease medications and other treatments. 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. The WGAD concluded that Sharmahd's detention was arbitrary and called for his "immediate unconditional release." Merz attempted to travel to Iran to verify the health of Sharmahd, but Iranian authorities denied him a visa. Merz repeatedly demanded Sharmahd's release and called for 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. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the execution and called it "a scandal." Baerbock, the German foreign minister, condemned "the murder of Jamshid Sharmahd by the Iranian regime in the strongest possible terms." Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based NGO, tallied Sharmahd's killing as one of at least 166 executions carried out in Iran in October 2024.

On 5 November 2024, a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary asserted that Sharmahd died before he could be executed, contradicting the Iranian government's earlier statements. The official gave no details.

Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, called Sharmahd's execution "appalling" and said it was "seriously harming" EU–Iran relations. Borrell noted that the EU had imposed new sanctions against Iran shortly before Sharmahd was killed, and would consider additional "targeted and significant measures" against Iran, including adding its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the EU's list of terrorist groups.