BERLIN: Germany said on Wednesday that it was expelling two diplomats from the Iranian embassy in Berlin in response to the death sentence an Iranian court handed down against an Iranian-German national.

After the death penalty verdict on Tuesday against Jamshid Sharmahd, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement that Berlin was “declaring two Iranian embassy staff members to be persona non grata” and “ordering them to leave Germany”.

A ministry spokesman said later the Iranians would have “a few days” to quit the country.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned “in the strongest terms” the verdict against Sharmahd, who supporters say was abducted abroad and forcibly returned to Iran for a show trial.

“The Iranian regime is fighting its own people in every way possible and shows no respect for human rights,” he tweeted, calling on Tehran to reverse the “unacceptable” death penalty ruling. Baerbock summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires over the case and called for Sharmahd to be given “a fair appeal based on the rule of law”. The German foreign minister has been at the forefront of Western voices condemning Tehran’s bloody crackdown on demonstrations and its executions of anti-government protesters.

The Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted Sharmahd, 67, in connection with the deadly bombing of a mosque in 2008, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

Iranian authorities announced in August 2020 that Sharmahd, who is also a US resident, was arrested in what they described as a “complex operation” without specifying how, where or when he was seized.

His family says he was kidnapped by the Iranian security services while in transit in Dubai and then brought to Iran.

His daughter Gazelle Sharmahd insisted on Wednesday on his innocence and called on EU countries to ratchet up the pressure to save him.

European governments “should use all the means in their political arsenal — each and every one of them,” she told. “It needs heroic measures right now. It needs extreme measures”. Baerbock had condemned the ruling on Tuesday as “absolutely unacceptable” and promised a “strong reaction” to the decision, resulting in Wednesday’s expulsion order.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2023