Iran Executes LA County Man Abducted In Dubai: Reports

GLENDORA, CA — A man from the San Gabriel Valley was executed this week by Iran after being kidnapped in 2020 and accused of terrorism, according to reports.

Iranian-German national Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, lived in Glendora but was kidnapped by Iranian security forces in Dubai while trying to get a connecting flight to India on a work trip for his software company in July 2020, the Associated Press reported.

He was sentenced to death in 2023 after Iranian authorities accused him of planning over 20 terrorist attacks, including a 2008 mosque bombing in Shiraz that killed 14, and leading the pro-monarchist Kingdom Assembly of Iran group, according to the BBC.

Sharmahd had denied the charges and his family said he was a spokesman for the group but nothing more, the BBC reported, noting Amnesty International claimed he was tortured and forced to confess.

Kingdom Assembly of Iran is based in Los Angeles and aims to restore the Iranian monarchy overthrown in 1979, according to Reuters.

Iran accused Sharmahd of being “under orders from masters in Western intelligence agencies, the United States and the child-killing Zionist regime” in connection with the attacks, and of "disclosing classified information" on Iranian paramilitary missile sites in 2017, the Associated Press reported.

An operative for Iran over a decade ago tried to hire a hitman to kill Sharmahd in California, according to the Associated Press, citing WikiLeaks.