US Envoy Meets Family Of Prisoner Sentenced To Death In Iran
US envoy for Iran met Friday with the family of US permanent resident Jamshid Sharmahd, who was left out of a prisoner release deal with Tehran earlier this month.
US envoy for Iran met Friday with the family of US permanent resident Jamshid Sharmahd, who was left out of a prisoner release deal with Tehran earlier this month.
Sharmahd, a German Iranian citizen who was kidnapped in Dubai by Iranian agents in 2020 and taken to Iran possibly through Oman, was sentenced to death in February in Iran after being convicted of heading a pro-monarchist group accused of a deadly 2008 bombing.
Deputy Special Envoy Abram Paley posted a picture of himself with Sharmahd's son Shayan and daughter Gazelle on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.
"I welcomed the opportunity to meet with Jamshid Sharmahd’s family today. He should have never been detained in Iran, and we hope to see the day he is reunited with his loved ones," Paley wrote.
Paley has taken over the position of US envoy for Iran after Rob Malley who was appointed to the post at the beginning of the Biden administration was put on unpaid leave in June after an apparent violation of security protocols. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is handling his case.
Responding to the post, Gazelle Sharmahd said she had told Paley she needed "actions" and that her father must be part of whatever is agreed to free US nationals.
"We will continue to urge the Biden Administration to work with stakeholders to #LeaveNoOneBehind or stop negotiations with my dad’s kidnappers," Sharmahd said on X.
Gazelle and Shayan have been camping outside the State Department for over a week, demanding a meeting with US officials to press their father’s case. Diaspora Iranians have expressed a wave of support on social media for the Shahmahd family and many Iranian Americans have visited the daughter and son outside the State Department. Iran’s exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi visited them last week and voiced his support for their case.
A deal to free five US citizens taken hostage by Iran in exchange for freeing $6 billion of Iranian funds frozen in South Korea, has led to intense controversy, especially that two more prisoners were not included in the deal. Former American and Australian hostages in Iran have criticized the Biden administrations for what is seen as essentially a ransom payment to Iran, arguing that it will further encourage hostage taking by bad actors.
Since his imprisonment, human rights organizations have warned of 68-year-old Sharmahd’s deteriorating health. He has been held in solitary confinement and was denied an independent attorney and fair legal procedures during his trial. In February, Iran's judiciary sentenced him to death.
Iran's intelligence ministry at the time when Shahrmahd was kidnapped and taken to Iran, described him as "the ringleader of the terrorist Tondar group, who directed armed and terrorist acts in Iran from America."
Based in Los Angeles, the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar, says it seeks to restore the Iranian monarchy that was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution. It runs pro-Iranian opposition radio and television stations abroad.
The rallies were held outside the provincial offices of the bar associations in several provinces this week. Expressing their objections, attorneys at these protests described the measure as "contrary to the fundamental rights of the people and in violation of the independence of the Bar Association.”
They also urged the Guardian Council – a constitutional 12-member council that wields veto power over legislation passed by the parliament -- to annul the decision. They also called on the heads of the three branches of Iran’s government – administration, judiciary and legislative – to review the newly approved resolution.
On August 21, lawmakers passed a new bill that compels bar associations to comply with the decisions of the Regulatory Board of the Ministry of Economy, practically turning them into government subsidiaries. The new law also prohibits annulment of the Regulatory Board’s decisions in the Administrative Justice Court.
The resolution also grants authority to the Ministry of Economy for issuing, extending, and revoking attorney licenses. Outraged over the measure, Iranian lawyers say the move runs contrary to international legal norms and existing regulations.
The parliament’s resolution also tasks the Economy Ministry to draft new monitoring regulations to assess the performance of lawyers in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice and the Judiciary. Another clause of the resolution mandates the ministry to establish a "system for assessing the commitment and effectiveness of lawyers by clients" and publish the "results of each lawyer's assessment by previous clients" to the public.
The resolution coincided with intensified measures by the regime to discourage possible protests ahead of the anniversary of last year’s nationwide uprising, ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. More than 500 protesters were killed and over 22,000 were arrested during the regime’s crackdown. Although protesters were given harsh sentences and were denied legal representation and due process in most cases, independent lawyers were the only hope of the prisoners, making their voices heard in Iran and abroad.
Bar associations, as a long-standing professional and legal institution in Iran, has consistently encountered pressures from governmental bodies and the judiciary, gradually losing its autonomy and authority through the enactment of various laws.
In June 2021, President Ebrahims Raisi introduced another set of regulations to restrict the bar associations in his last weeks as chief justice. In May 2020, over 12,000 legal practitioners in a letter to Raisi protested another set of regulations as "devastating” for bar associations and distorting “the procedures of fair legal investigations."
After the establishment of the Islamic Republic the existing Bar Association was closed down and many top attorneys were persecuted. In 1997, parliament passed the Law on Conditions for Lawyerhood Licenses, allowing the reopening of bar associations in all provinces with members required to profess belief and “practical commitment" to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism or Christianity.
Dadban, a group of pro-bono lawyers in Iran defending political prisoners and rights activists, reported Thursday several cases of “increasing pressure on lawyers ahead of the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini's murder and the beginning of the Women, Life, Freedom movement.” It said the intelligence organization of the Judiciary has summoned several lawyers in the past few days and seeks to revoke the licenses of many others. Iran has several parallel intelligence organizations.
In addition to the ongoing protest rallies, an online campaign against the resolution has garnered about 20,000 signatures in less than 48 hours after its launch, calling for amendments to “the new regulations that contradict the principles of the Constitution and Islamic Sharia law.”
Ali Mandanipour, the former head of the National Union of Iranian Bar Associations – which includes the Central Bar Association (Tehran Bar Association) as well as 15 regional bar associations – issued an open letter to the heads of government branches, calling the new resolution as the final nail in the coffin of bar associations in Iran.
The electronic warfare drills -- codenamed Separ-e Hafezan-e Velayat 1402 (Shield of Velayat's Guardians 1402) -- involved various units from the military's navy, ground and air forces as well as air defenses and was staged in the central, largely desert region of the country.
The state broadcaster said that the exercises featured domestically manufactured radars, drones, manned and unmanned fighter jets, micro aerial vehicles and other military equipment as the country seeks to assess the performance and effectiveness of various fixed, mobile, ground-based and airborne electronic warfare systems.
“The army has the appropriate infrastructure, and we have achieved favorable results in countering threats in today’s world and predicting future threats in this sensitive and complicated arena,” said Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the deputy chief of the army’s coordination department.
According to Friday's statement by the Army, various tactics and operations have been carried out during the drill, including identifying radio and data link communications, execution of group attack operations by micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) against targets, electronic operations to protect radars, and ground-based electronic operations to disrupt and deceive enemy radar systems.
Iran has recently unveiled a series of what it called new maritime weapons and an upgraded drone earlier this month as Washington appeared to be increasing pressure on Tehran.
Earlier in the month, the Biden administration signaled that it may soon offer to put armed sailors and Marines on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Pentagon last month had already sent additional F-35 and F-16 fighter jets along with a warship to the Middle East in a bid to monitor key waterways in the region following Iran's seizure and harassment of commercial vessels.