Iran executes Iranian-German national after terrorism conviction, state media says

(Reuters) -Iran executed Iranian-German national Jamshid Sharmahd after he was convicted of carrying out terrorist attacks, Iranian state media said on Monday.

Sharmahd, who also holds U.S. residency, was sentenced to death in 2023 on charges of “corruption on earth”, a capital offence under Iran’s Islamic laws.

He was accused by Iran of heading a pro-monarchist group accused of a deadly 2008 bombing and planning other attacks in the country.

“Jamshid Sharmahd was not even given the opportunity to defend himself in the trial against the charges levelled against him,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday on social platform X, calling the execution “a scandal”.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also condemned the execution and criticised the “inhumane regime” in Iran.

“We made it clear to Tehran time and again that the execution of a German national would have serious consequences,” Baerbock said in a statement.

Sharmahd’s arrest was announced in 2020 in an intelligence ministry statement that described him as “the ringleader of the terrorist Tondar group, who directed armed and terrorist acts in Iran from America.”

Based in Los Angeles, the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar, says it seeks to restore the Iranian monarchy that was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution. It runs pro-Iranian opposition radio and television stations abroad.

“The execution of the death sentence against our fellow citizen Jamshid Sharmahd is a heinous crime,” the leader of the Christian Democrats CDU in Germany, Friedrich Merz, said on Monday.

The opposition leader asked the German government to respond decisively, saying that the approach of “quiet diplomacy” had failed.

“Relations with Iran should be put to the test in view of the state-sponsored killing of a German citizen,” Merz said. “The Iranian ambassador must be expelled.”

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom and Maria Martinez in Berlin; Editing by William Maclean, Christina Fincher and Lisa Shumaker)