Jamshid Sharmahd has been in solitary confinement for 728 days when he experienced what may be the last day of the trial in Tehran on Tuesday. The German-Iranian now faces the death penalty. "A state assassination is planned here," fears Gazelle Sharmahd, the Los Angeles-based daughter of the 67-year-old regime critic.
Looking at the photos from the process shocked her. "I'm glad he's still standing there after the ordeal they put him through," she says. "But he's so thin, you can see the fear in his eyes." Her father has a heart condition and in one of the only two phone calls since his incarceration indicated that he was being tortured. He only gets his Parkinson's medication sparingly and he has lost his teeth.
After two years in prison and a show trial, she now fears the worst for her father. Gazelle Sharmahd demands that the federal government must act. "I ask myself: What is the life of a German citizen worth?"
As a child, Jamshid Sharmahd came to Germany in 1962 and acquired German citizenship in 1995. From 2006 he lived in the USA, reporting for the dissident organization Tondar. In 2009 he survived an attempted murder. Two years ago, Sharmahd was kidnapped from Dubai to Iran and has since been detained at an undisclosed location. He has to answer charges of “corruption on earth” before the Revolutionary Court 15 in Tehran.
He is accused of being involved in an attack on a mosque in Shiraz, Iran, in 2008. Sharmahd made a confession on Iranian television, which his daughter said was made under duress. Iran insists on Sharmahd's Iranian citizenship and refuses him German consular support.
On Tuesday, the court confronted Sharmahd with dozens of new allegations - such as planning attacks or cooperation with Israel. Sharmahd denied all.
"The allegations have no basis, they are fictitious," says Gazelle Sharmahd WELT. “They serve a different purpose: to pretend it's a real court case. But that's not it."
Iran is currently taking massive action against its own people. The situation is getting worse under the new President Ebrahim Raisi, reports Katja Müller-Fahlbusch from Amnesty International. “Protests are being brutally suppressed and the number of death sentences that have been carried out has reached an alarming level,” she tells WELT. At least 251 people were executed in Iran in the first half of 2022 alone.
"The trial against Jamshid Sharmahd was extremely unfair and in no way corresponded to international standards," says Müller-Fahlbusch. Sharmahd has no freely chosen legal counsel, his detention was tantamount to an "enforced disappearance" - and the confession was obtained under duress.
"The case against Jamshid Sharmahd is clearly politically motivated and contradicts all fundamental principles of the rule of law," agrees Renata Alt, Chair of the Bundestag's Human Rights Committee. "The feared verdict is inhuman, barbaric and unjustifiable," said the FDP politician. The federal government has campaigned for Sharmahd in “a wide variety of discussion formats”, but the negotiations with Iran have been “protracted and tough”.
The Foreign Office has said that since the arrest, Sharmahd has been advocated "several times at a high level" and will continue to do so. However, Iran refuses any consular access to dual nationals. They reject the death penalty as a "cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment". A ministry spokesman affirmed that he would raise the death penalty "both bilaterally and in the context of Europe and the United Nations on a regular basis with Iran."
"Unfortunately, we know that the Iranian government is not very receptive to this pressure and often plays the fates of innocent people off against each other in a perfidious way," says Müller-Fahlbusch. The federal government must press for Sharmahd's release “with all vehemence”. Frank Schwabe, human rights policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, calls for consequences: "Iran must feel the importance of this case in particular for German-Iranian relations."
"The system in Iran is completely patriarchal, backward and medieval," says Alt WELT. She believes that the situation of dual nationals must become "the central issue" in the negotiations for the nuclear deal with Iran.
Sevim Dagdelen of the left calls for an outlawing of the "bestial punishment of people" through the death penalty. Iran should "stop developing into an ever-increasing security risk for its citizens and the region," stresses Michael Brand, the Union's human rights policy spokesman.
"Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power," says Israel correspondent Christine Kensche. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has enriched uranium 18 times more than is permitted. Iran is apparently hardly impressed by the sanctions and the talks are currently idle.
Source: WORLD
Gazelle Sharmahd is also calling for tougher action against the "terrorist regime" of Iran: "The threat of ending economic relations could also help," she hopes. "To remain silent about human rights violations means complicity." Demonstrations are to take place in front of the Iranian consulate in Frankfurt am Main on Saturday.
The daughter fears that the death sentence will soon be pronounced. And still doesn't want to lose hope: "The federal government must prevent the death of my father."
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