Iran says German-Iranian died before execution could be carried out

Iran’s judiciary has said Iranian-German dissident Jamshid Sharmahd died before his execution was reported by state media late last month.

On Tuesday, judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told reporters that “his sentence was ready to be implemented, but he died before the sentence was carried out”. He gave no further details.

He also said that Sharmahd, who lived in the US, had been tried “as an Iranian for the terrorist actions that he committed”.

Iranian authorities accused the 69-year-old journalist and activist of being the leader of a terrorist group known as Tondar and of planning a number of attacks in Iran, including the 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz in that killed 14 people.

Tondar – which means “thunder” in Persian – is another name of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran (KAI), a little-known US-based opposition group that seeks to restore the monarchy overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A German official told Reuters news agency: “Jamshid Sharmahd was abducted by Iran and detained for years without a fair trial, in inhumane conditions and without the necessary medical care. Iran is responsible for his death.”

Read more: BBC News