TEHRAN – Iran on Sunday put on trial the leader of a U.S.-based “terrorist group” behind a deadly mosque bombing in 2008, the judiciary said.
Iran-born Jamshid Sharmahd, 66, who is also a German national and a U.S. resident, is charged with spreading “corruption on earth”, one of the most severe charges in Islam, and which carries the death penalty.
“The trial of Jamshid Sharmahd, the leader of the Tondar terrorist group, was held in public this morning,” the Judiciary’s Mizan Online agency said.
Sharmahd is “accused of corruption on earth by planning and directing terrorist acts,” it added, citing the indictment.
It includes “the bombing of a mosque in Shiraz (southern Iran) on April 12, 2008, which martyred 14 people and injured approximately 300 others.”
According to the intelligence ministry, the group had planned to carry out several high-profile and potentially deadly attacks across the Islamic Republic, but its efforts were thwarted by the intricate intelligence operations targeting the outfit.
Sharmahd appeared in court dressed in blue-striped prisoners’ pyjamas.
Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality for citizens, announced his arrest in August 2020 in a “complex operation”.
Prosecutors say Sharmahd had established contact with “FBI and CIA officers” and “attempted to contact Israeli Mossad agents”, Mizan reported.
A representative of the victims’ families took the stand in court and asked for “the most severe punishment” for Sharmahd.
Videos were also screened in the court, which prosecutors said detailed some of the “terrorist acts” of the group.
Sharmahd was also seen in a video saying that “we are not ashamed to kill anyone”, Mizan reported. The trial continues.
He confessed to having a relationship with both the FBI and the CIA. He was in contact with nine FBI and CIA agents and his last meeting was in January 2020.
Iran has criticized Washington for having welcomed Sharmahd, condemning it for “supporting known terrorists who have claimed responsibility for several terrorist acts” in Iran.
Tondar, “thunder” in Farsi, also known as the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, aims to topple the Islamic Republic.
According to Tondar’s website, Sharmahd was born in Tehran in 1955.
He grew up in an Iranian-German family, and moved to California in the United States in 2003, where he reportedly made statements both hostile to Iran and Islam on satellite television channels.
In 2009, Iran convicted and hanged three men for the Shiraz bombing, saying they had links to the monarchist group and had taken their orders from “an Iranian CIA agent” based in the U.S. in an attempt to assassinate a senior official in Iran.
In 2010, two other members of the group, Muhammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, who “confessed to planning to assassinate officials”, were also tried, convicted and hanged.
Last week, Iran said its intelligence units arrested the No. 2 leader of Tondar, identified only as “Masmatus.”
The group was also behind a 2010 bombing at Imam Khomeini’s mausoleum in Tehran that wounded several people.
The prosecutor’s representative said in an address to the court that the group intended to carry out 23 terrorist acts, but was successful in only five cases and failed in 18 others.
Sharmahd had confessed that his first contact with the FBI was after the bomb blast in Shiraz, during which several security targets were specified for attack.
Overall, he had admitted to contacting nine members of the FBI and CIA, with the last meeting dating back to January 2020.
Prosecutors said the entire IDs and passwords of the group were in the possession of FBI officers and the defendant had correspondence with the secretary of state and the president of the United States.