A US resident kidnapped by Iranian revolutionary guards in Dubai has been sentenced to death on terror charges after a show trial in Tehran.
Accused Jamshid Sharmahd – who holds joint German-Iranian nationality – is said to have been a CIA spy linked to a mosque bombing that killed 14.
Regime critics say the charges were fabricated to provoke Western governments.
The Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced Sharmahd, 67, to death by hanging on 21st February.
He had disappeared during a stopover in Dubai in August 2020 and later surfaced in custody in Iran.
His family say Iranian security agents kidnapped him and took him by force to the Islamic Republic.
Officials in Iran accused Sharmahd of being a leader of the banned Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar, group.
Tondar is an Iranian exile monarchist opposition group based in Los Angeles, USA.
It seeks the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the restoration of the Iranian monarchy under a new dynasty.
Pro-government media in Iran claimed Sharmahd committed five acts of terrorism and planned 18 more.
One of the acts they alleged he carried out was a mosque bombing in Shiraz on 12th April 2008 that left 14 dead and 300 wounded.
Prosecutors in Iran also accuse him of contact with the FBI and CIA and attempted contact with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
Sharmahd’s daughter, Gazelle, said during his trial last year: “All of the charges are fabricated charges. They are scapegoating my dad, who is innocent.”
Human rights activists and critics of the Iranian government labelled his trial a sham.
The sentencing comes after a recent surge in confirmed arrests of Western nationals in Iran.
The cash-strapped theocracy is accused of carrying them out for ransom payments from Western governments, as well as to gain leverage in negotiations with the West.
Death sentences in Iran are typically carried out by hanging.
In other countries, gallows are designed to drop the condemned and break their neck.
However, in Iran gallows cause death by strangulation and carotid reflex in an agonising 10 to 20 minutes.
