Germany Expels Two Iranian Diplomats Over Death Sentence

(Bloomberg) -- Germany ordered two Iranian diplomats to leave the country in short order after a German-Iranian man was sentenced to death on Tuesday over accusations of organizing a bomb attack in 2008 and collaborating with the US and Israel.

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Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she summoned the charge d’affaires of the Iranian embassy in Berlin and informed them that Germany doesn’t accept “the massive violation of the rights of a German citizen.” In an emailed statement, she also urged Iran to allow the condemned man, Jamshid Sharmahd, “a fair and constitutional appeal process.”

Sharmahd led a California-based, pro-monarchy group called the Kingdom Assembly of Iran and campaigned for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and its regime.

He was arrested by Iranian intelligence in July 2020 in what they described as a “complex operation,” according to state media reports at the time. Sharmahd’s family told the Associated Press that he was visiting Dubai when he was abducted by Iranian agents and forcibly taken to Iran.

“The Iranian regime is battling its own people in every imaginable way and is disregarding human rights,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Twitter, calling the death sentence “unacceptable.”

“We condemn it in the strongest terms and call on the Iranian regime to overturn the ruling,” he added.

(Updates with comments from Scholz in last two paragraphs.)

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