Last month, the Iranian regime claimed to have executed German-Iranian dissident Jamshid Sharmahd. Sharmahd, who was residing in the US, was abducted in 2020 and handed a death sentence last year for the false charge of ‘leading terror operations’.

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of interviewing Sharmahd’s daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, as she campaigned to save her father. As we talked, she recounted – with unwavering resolve in her voice – the harrowing story of her father’s abduction and her family’s struggle to bring him home.

Sharmahd was a software engineer who was involved in creating and maintaining a website for Tondar, a little-known group that wants to overthrow the Islamic Republic that was established in the 1979 Revolution and restore the Iranian monarchy. In 2020, he was spirited away by Iranian agents while on a brief and unexpected Covid-enforced layover in Dubai. Gazelle told me of how his family tracked his phone as he was forced across the border to Oman, and of the cold horror that washed over them when his blindfolded face later appeared on Iranian state television. He was disoriented, clearly having been tortured, and was made to ‘confess’ to fabricated terror charges. This public spectacle marked the start of his brutal captivity.

Today, Gazelle and her family have no proof of Sharmahd’s death. They have no indication that the US or Germany have made any efforts to confirm the Iranian regime’s claims, nor secure the return of his body for a proper and respectful burial.