Iran orders death penalty for 'kidnapped' German national
An Iranian court sentenced to death on terror charges an Iranian-German national who supporters say was abducted in the Persian Gulf and forcibly returned to Iran for a show trial.
The Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted Jamshid Sharmahd in connection with the deadly bombing of a mosque in 2008, the judiciary's Mizan Online news agency reported.
Iranian authorities announced in August 2020 that Sharmahd, 67, who is also a German national and a US resident, was arrested in what they described as a "complex operation" without specifying how, where or when he was seized.
His family say that he was abducted by the Iranian security services while in transit in Dubai and then brought under duress to Iran.
Sharmahd is accused by Iran of leading the Tondar group which aims to topple the Islamic republic and is outlawed as a terrorist organisation by Iran.
Sharmahd planned to commit 23 "terrorist" acts, of which he succeeded in five, including the bombing of a mosque in the southern city of Shiraz on April 12, 2008, which killed 14 people and wounded 300 others.
Prosecutors had also accused Sharmahd of having established contact with "FBI and CIA officers" and of having "attempted to contact Israeli Mossad agents".
In 2009, Iran convicted and hanged three men for the Shiraz bombing, claiming they had links to the monarchist group and had taken their orders from "an Iranian CIA agent" based in the US in an attempt to assassinate a senior official in Iran.
