‘Iran kidnapped my German-citizen father – then put him to death,’ says daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd Amnesty International condemns the execution of the 69-year-old software engineer after ‘forced confessions’ and a ‘sham trial’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/02/iran-germany-jamshid-sharmahd-amnesty-us/ Jamshid Sharmahd made what would be his last video call to his family in a Dubai hotel room on July 28 2020. The 69-year-old Iranian-German software engineer with permanent US residency was just hours away from a connecting flight to India, but would never reach his destination. He couldn’t have known that the mundane details of travel – checking flight times, arranging airport transport, packing his laptop – would be his final acts of freedom. Iranian agents were already closing in on him, transforming a simple layover into the beginning of a fatal odyssey. His daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, recounts those final moments with the weight of someone who has replayed them countless times and searched for ways the story might have ended differently. “We last saw him on July 28 in his hotel room,” she tells The Telegraph from Los Angeles, her voice breaking. “And from there, he was kidnapped.” The man the agents stalked through Dubai’s summer heat was not a warrior or a militant. His weapons, as his daughter explains, were far simpler: “He was fighting the Islamic Republic with words.” The agents kidnapped him and forcefully transferred him to Iran through Oman in what they would later describe as a “complex intelligence operation”. In 2006 or 2007, long before social media gave dissent its digital megaphone, Mr Sharmahd had created a website where Iranians could freely share their thoughts. ‘We don’t have proof’ The software engineer would spend his final years in Tehran’s notorious prisons before being hanged right before the morning call for prayer on Monday this week. Iran’s judiciary accused him of terrorism and sentenced him to death in 2023 following what Amnesty International described as “forced confessions” and a “sham trial”. His family, Germany, the US, the UN and international rights groups denied the allegations against him. Gazelle Sharmahd cannot accept her father’s execution and speaks of him defiantly in the present tense. “They claim that my father is dead and we don’t have proof. They haven’t given us proof. They haven’t shown us where he died, or what happened to him,” she said. “My father is heroic, people like my father are like a diamond in the sea, one of the only people who are not afraid to speak the truth.” Emphasising her father’s innocence, she adds: “My father had done nothing wrong.” Now she faces some of the attacks he bore for years. “I’m thinking right now about all of these years and the slander and what he’d been through,” Sharmahd said. “I just got a glimpse of what he went through right now because now the pressure is coming on me. I don’t know how he survived. “He is the kind of person that you want to go to when you have a catastrophe,” Gazelle adds, her voice heavy again with sorrow. “He is the kind of person that I would go to right now and ask, what can I do? What should I do?” ‘They did nothing’ She said the US and German governments had “failed” to protect Mr Sharmahd. “They have failed to protect my father,” she declared. “The moment he was kidnapped, they did nothing.” The final betrayal, in her view, came during Iran’s hostage swap with the US last year. “The last one, last September by the Biden administration, did not include my father. “They excluded him without any explanation. They condemned him to death by doing that. They did not take responsibility. “When he was held hostage there for 1,500 days, they did nothing. When he was put on sham trial after sham trial, they did nothing.” Germany ordered the closure of all three Iranian consulates on Thursday in response to Mr Sharmahd’s execution, leaving the Islamic Republic with only its embassy in Berlin. Now she faces some of the attacks he bore for years. “I’m thinking right now about all of these years and the slander and what he’d been through,” Sharmahd said. “I just got a glimpse of what he went through right now because now the pressure is coming on me. I don’t know how he survived. “He is the kind of person that you want to go to when you have a catastrophe,” Gazelle adds, her voice heavy again with sorrow. “He is the kind of person that I would go to right now and ask, what can I do? What should I do?” ‘They did nothing’ She said the US and German governments had “failed” to protect Mr Sharmahd. “They have failed to protect my father,” she declared. “The moment he was kidnapped, they did nothing.” The final betrayal, in her view, came during Iran’s hostage swap with the US last year. “The last one, last September by the Biden administration, did not include my father. “They excluded him without any explanation. They condemned him to death by doing that. They did not take responsibility. “When he was held hostage there for 1,500 days, they did nothing. When he was put on sham trial after sham trial, they did nothing.” Germany ordered the closure of all three Iranian consulates on Thursday in response to Mr Sharmahd’s execution, leaving the Islamic Republic with only its embassy in Berlin. They include Vida Mehrannia, the wife of Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic who has been on death row since 2017. Mr Djalali, a resident in Sweden, was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to death the following year on charges of espionage for Israel’s Mossad. “He called me a day after Mr Sharmahd was executed, and he was very worried,” Mrs Mehrannia tells The Telegraph from Stockholm. “He was heartbroken for Mr Sharmahd and his family. “He was very sad for Mr Sharmahd’s daughter, who tried for years to do everything she could for her father.” ‘Cannot only condemn’ Mrs Mehrannia fears her husband could face the same sudden fate. “My husband might be executed any moment, just like Mr Sharmahd. It’s a big alarm for all death row prisoners,” she said, adding that her husband’s health has worsened after multiple hunger strikes. She urges Western governments to do everything possible to make Iran stop “these inhuman executions”. “They cannot only condemn them and still maintain relations with Iran,” Mrs Mehrannia says. Western governments and human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of taking dual and foreign nationals hostage for the sole purpose of using them in prisoner swaps or as a bargaining chip in international negotiations. “I’m very worried,” Mrs Mehrannia says. “It can happen to my husband any moment.” They include Vida Mehrannia, the wife of Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic who has been on death row since 2017. Mr Djalali, a resident in Sweden, was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to death the following year on charges of espionage for Israel’s Mossad. “He called me a day after Mr Sharmahd was executed, and he was very worried,” Mrs Mehrannia tells The Telegraph from Stockholm. “He was heartbroken for Mr Sharmahd and his family. “He was very sad for Mr Sharmahd’s daughter, who tried for years to do everything she could for her father.” ‘Cannot only condemn’ Mrs Mehrannia fears her husband could face the same sudden fate. “My husband might be executed any moment, just like Mr Sharmahd. It’s a big alarm for all death row prisoners,” she said, adding that her husband’s health has worsened after multiple hunger strikes. She urges Western governments to do everything possible to make Iran stop “these inhuman executions”. “They cannot only condemn them and still maintain relations with Iran,” Mrs Mehrannia says. Western governments and human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of taking dual and foreign nationals hostage for the sole purpose of using them in prisoner swaps or as a bargaining chip in international negotiations. “I’m very worried,” Mrs Mehrannia says. “It can happen to my husband any moment.”
Iran arrests female student who stripped to protest harassment Student reportedly injured during arrest, with ‘blood stains’ seen on the car’s tyres https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-arrest-student-protest-hijab-b2640469.html
Let's catch up with the latest regarding Iran's brutal treatment of a Nobel Prize laureate. The authorities hope by not treating her she will simply die. Iranian regime aiming for ‘silent death’ of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner thought to have cancer, family says https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/04/middleeast/narges-mohammadi-iran-cancer-prison-intl/index.html The family of imprisoned human rights activist Narges Mohammadi have accused the Iranian regime of trying to bring about her “slow death” by depriving her of a vital surgery needed to confirm her cancer diagnosis. In an exclusive statement to CNN on Monday, the family accused Iranian authorities of “endangering her life” by depriving her access to the biopsy needed for a “clear diagnosis” of bone cancer. It comes after her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said on Sunday that doctors had recently detected a “bone lesion in her right leg suspected of being cancerous.” For most of the past two decades, Mohammadi has been an inmate of Tehran’s Evin prison, which is notorious for housing critics of the Iranian regime. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” “The Islamic Republic government is risking Narges Mohammadi’s life, effectively aiming for a ‘silent death’ without bearing direct accountability,” the Narges Foundation, which is run by her family, said. The family warned that any further delays in procuring treatment for Mohammadi may prove “fatal.” The activist had already had to wait nine weeks for the most recent hospital transfer which detected the potentially cancerous lesion. Her family and lawyer are now calling for “immediate medical furlough” to both carry out the biopsy and treat a range of other health conditions she is grappling with. According to her lawyer, a recent MRI revealed the progression of arthritis and disc disease while doctors have also called for a further angiography on one of her heart arteries after she suffered a heart attack in 2021. Years of successive imprisonment and bouts of extended periods of solitary confinement “have severely compromised (Mohammadi’s) health leaving her with conditions that cannot be addressed through a short, incomplete hospital visit,” her family stressed. Iranian authorities told CNN, “unfortunately we don’t comment on human rights issues.” High-profile figures such as former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have joined the call for Iranian authorities to release Mohammadi. “By withholding medical care she needs, Iranian prison authorities are slowly killing detained activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi,” Clinton warned in a post on her official social media last Friday. While in prison, Mohammadi has continued to campaign tirelessly for human rights causes, lobbying strongly for the rights of Iranian women and calling for a peaceful resolution to the war in Gaza.
Iran has developed fentanyl-based chemical weapons https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-has-developed-fentanyl-based-chemical-weapons/ar-AA1tPcPc Iran is believed to have weaponized pharmaceutical agents to kill or incapacitate. These chemical weapons affect a victim's central nervous system. These are especially a problem if Iran supplies them to militant allies like Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has developed chemical weapons based on synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, warns a US expert, powerful agents that could incapacitate soldiers or civilians when added to grenades or artillery. Pharmaceutical-based agents, or PBA, are essentially weaponized medicines that incapacitate or kill their victims depending on the exposure. Iran may have given PBA to its proxies such as Hezbollah, which could use them to kidnap Israeli troops and civilians. "At a time of growing regional instability in the Middle East, largely the result of the militancy of Iranian proxies, the threats posed by Iran's weaponized PBA program can no longer be overlooked," wrote Matthew Levitt in an article for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. The U.S. Government Accountability Office defines PBAs as "chemicals based on pharmaceutical compounds, which may or may not have legitimate medical uses, and can cause severe illness or death when misused." They include opioids such as fentanyl and tranquilizers for animals. These drugs affect a victim's central nervous system. "Once inhaled, these agents cause victims to lose full consciousness and enable the forces deploying them to advance quickly and quietly and/or take captive the unconscious victims," Levitt wrote. Iran was a victim of chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when Iraqi chemical attacks — including nerve gases such as Sarin, and mustard gas — contributed to as many as 1 million Iranian casualties. But Iran employed its own mustard gas on a few occasions during the war. Israel believes Iran used PBAs against rebels in the Syrian Civil War, while there are reports that pro-Iranian militias in Iraq may have unleashed them against anti-government protestors. "The problem is that Iran is right when they said they've been victims of chemical weapons in terrible ways during the Iran-Iraq war," Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, told Business Insider. "But the reality is they themselves have been using these as well." The US and its allies have warned for years that Iran is developing pharmaceutical-based weapons in breach of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the manufacture and use of "toxic chemicals," defined as "chemical action on life processes [that] can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals." Treaty signatories — including Iran — are obligated to destroy existing stockpiles. Still, evidence suggests Iran is pursuing PBAs. "In 2014, Iran's Chemistry Department of IHU [Imam Hossein University] sought kilogram quantities of medetomidine — a [veterinary] sedative it has researched as an aerosolized incapacitant — from Chinese exporters, according to a 2023 US State Department's report. "The Chemistry Department has little history of veterinary or even medical research, and the quantities sought (over 10,000 effective doses) were inconsistent with the reported end use of research." In September 2023, Iranian anti-government hackers "posted confidential documents detailing an Iranian military university's development of grenades meant to disseminate medetomidine," the State Department said. Of particular concern were references in Iranian literature to the 2002 Dubrovka incident, when Russian security forces pumped pharmaceutical-based gas — probably fentanyl or carfentanyl, another synthetic opioid vastly more potent — into a crowded Moscow theater to subdue Chechen rebels who had taken almost a thousand hostages. Commandos then stormed the building and killed the incapacitated rebels — but the gas also killed more than 130 hostages. Yet restricting PBAs is difficult because they overlap with products used for legitimate law enforcement and medical purposes. For example, tear gas has been used by law enforcement as a riot control agent since the First World War, while US troops used it in the Vietnam War to smoke out enemy tunnels. Tear gas is still legal when employed for riot control, but not as a battlefield weapon. Stopping nations from manufacturing PBAs is " very, very difficult, which is why you've seen such a focus on diplomatic efforts, sanctions and some law enforcement actions," said Levitt. Iranian PBAs are a particular problem if Tehran has supplied them to proxies such as Hezbollah. "Deploying weapons produced with dual-use items, and then providing said weapons to proxies, provides Iran with multiple layers of cover and reasonable deniability for having done so at all," the CTC article noted. Israel feared that Hezbollah would use PBA weapons as part of an alleged plan to seize the Galilee region of northern Israel and kidnap Israeli citizens. "Maybe you just use them to incapacitate the border guards and reach the now unprotected civilians," Levitt said. "Or, you actually target and incapacitate the soldiers so you can kidnap or capture them." Israel's recent military offensives in Lebanon have badly hurt Hezbollah, including its huge arsenal of missiles. But PBAs can be added to hand grenades and mortar shells, of which Hezbollah still has ample stocks. And there remains a possibility that US forces could clash with Iran and its allies and encounter pharmaceutical-based agents. (The US, in contrast, completed the destruction of its chemical weapons in 2023.) However, Levitt emphasizes that PBAs are not in the same league as weapons of mass destruction such as nerve gas, which is potent enough to kill widely across exposure areas. "This is not a strategic threat. It is a tactical weapon." Nonetheless, chemical weapons do have a frightening aura, even if fentanyl gas is nowhere near as deadly as nerve gas. "I think that many, many people would see it that way because you're talking about chemical weapons," Levitt said.
We should expect a significant attack from the US on Iran before Trump takes office due to their assassination threat on Trump. Trump and Biden are meeting on Wednesday and I am quite sure this will be top of ticket.
Iran - a country so oppresive that the journalists who are not tortured to death in prison are committing suicide to protest the regime. Iranian journalist commits suicide protesting ‘Khamenei’s dictatorship,’ shaking social media Iranian journalist Kianoosh Sanjari took his life, protesting the regime’s oppression and calling for freedom for imprisoned activists. His final words rallied for a liberated Iran. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-829141
Iran says it won't try to kill Trump, figuring the hamburgers will do the job eventually. Iran said it won't try to kill Trump: U.S. official https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/nat...-wont-try-to-kill-trump-u-s-official/5989966/