Zoom Image

A demonstrator carries a picture of Jamshid and Gazelle Sharmahd: The German-Iranian was sentenced to death for »corruption on earth«.

Photograph:

Ina Fassbender / AFP

Jamshid Sharmahd, a German citizen, has been held captive by Iran for three years. Following a prisoner exchange between the US and Iran, his daughter Gazelle Sharmahd has called on the US and Germany to take urgent action. Jamshid Sharmahd was sentenced to death by Iran this year for alleged responsibility for a terrorist attack.

Gazelle Sharmahd met with U.S. officials for a roundtable in Washington after holding a sit-in in front of the State Department. "I ask the U.S. and Germany to free my father and save his life," said Sharmahd, who lives in California.

U.S. sees Germany as responsible

It is a matter of life and death, she stressed. Germany and the United States, however, played "a kind of (...) Ping-pong« and shift the responsibility to each other. It goes "back and forth," she criticized.

Gazelle Sharmahd made her demand after five U.S. citizens who had been imprisoned for years were transferred to house arrest about ten days ago in an agreement between Iran and the United States. Neither Washington nor Tehran gave details of the agreement. Iran described the agreement as a prisoner exchange.

The U.S. State Department had described Iran's treatment of Sharmahd as "reprehensible," but stressed that it was Germany's job to take care of the interests of a German citizen.

Gazelle Sharmahd criticized that Germany's efforts were focused only on improving its prison conditions. "Does he need a better toothpaste before they murder him now?" she asked. A spokesman for the Foreign Office in Berlin said that the family was going through "something unimaginable and unbearable."

In June, Gazelle Sharmahd filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Prosecutor's Office against eight members of Iran's judicial system. Together with the Berlin-based human rights organization "European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights e. V." (ECCHR), Gazelle Sharmad wants the Federal Prosecutor's Office to open investigations into "crimes against humanity". The daughter hopes that possible investigations by the judiciary would increase the pressure on the federal government to really stand up for her father's case. "So that my father will be saved, too."

According to his family, opposition activist Jamshid Sharmahd, who had last lived in the United States for years, was arrested and abducted by the Iranian secret service in Dubai in the summer of 2020. Since then, the 68-year-old has been in prison in Iran. In February, he was sentenced to death on terrorism charges, and at the end of April, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.

The family has also repeatedly accused the German government of not doing enough to secure Sharmahd's release.

muk/AFP