Profession:
Accountant
Nationality:
Iranian-Canadian
Arrested for:
He was arrested by the Revolutionary Guards in August 2016 just before he was due to board a flight to Canada, and was accused of “selling the country’s economic details to foreigners”.
Sharmahd, 68, who lived in the US, arrived in the United Arab Emirates in July 2020 and was awaiting a connecting flight to India when he disappeared. It is believed that he was kidnapped by Iranian agents in Dubai and then forcibly taken to Iran via Oman.
The following month, Iran’s intelligence ministry announced that it had arrested Sharmahd following a “complex operation”, without providing any details. It also published a video in which he appeared blindfolded and confessed to various crimes.
In February 2023, Iran’s judiciary said Sharmahd had been sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran after being found guilty of “spreading corruption on Earth through planning and leading terror operations”.
It alleged that he was the leader of a terrorist group known as Tondar and that he had “planned 23 terror attacks”, of which “five were successful”, 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.
According to Amnesty International, Sharmahd created a website to publish statements from the KAI, including claims of explosions inside Iran.
He also read out statements in radio and video broadcasts.
However, he denied his involvement in the attacks, saying he was only a spokesman, and rejected all accusations during his trial.
Amnesty said Sharmahd told his family that he had been tortured and subjected to other ill-treatment in detention, including by being held in prolonged solitary confinement.
He also told them that he had been denied adequate healthcare, with access to medications required for his Parkinson’s disease delayed routinely.
In July, Sharmahd’s daughter Gazelle told the BBC that he could be executed at any time.
“They’re killing him softly in solitary confinement in this death cell. But even if he survives that, they’re killing him by hanging him from a crane in public,” she said.