Germany moves to shut 3 Iranian consulates 

 

By dpa correspondents I Thursday, October 31, 2024

 

BERLIN – Germany is to close all three Iranian consulates general in the country in response to the execution of German-Iranian dual national Jamshid Sharmahd, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said relations with Iran have reached an “all-time low” following the killing, which was announced by Tehran on Monday.

The move affects the Iranian missions in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich, but not the embassy in Berlin.

The 32 employees at the consulates are to lose their rights to live in Germany and must leave the country, unless they have German citizenship.

Baerbock said the killing of Sharmahd shows the Iranian “regime of injustice” continues to act brutally.

“We have repeatedly made it unmistakably clear to Iran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences,” she added.

Germany’s ambassador to Iran, Markus Potzel, was summoned to Berlin for consultations to protest the execution.

However, Berlin is not planning to close its embassy in Tehran, Baerbock said, arguing that to do so would be a favour to the regime.

“We know that there is another Iran,” she said.

Controversial execution

The 69-year-old Sharmahd was sentenced to death in early 2023 in a controversial trial on alleged terror charges.

Sharmahd was born in Tehran in 1955 but came to West Germany at the age of 7. He ran a computer store in the northern city of Hanover for many years.

In 2003, he moved to California in the US, where he was politically active in the Iranian exiled monarchist opposition group Tondar (Thunder).

The Iranian government accuses the organization of being responsible for an attack in 2008 in the city of Shiraz that claimed several lives.

The accusations have not been independently verified, and relatives and rights groups have vehemently denied the allegations of Sharmahd’s involvement.

He was abducted in the summer of 2020 under mysterious circumstances during a trip through Dubai. Several reports have described an abduction by the Iranian secret service, a version of events that has not been confirmed.

Baerbock and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz strongly condemned the execution on Monday.

Scholz called the killing a “scandal” and said that the German government repeatedly and intensively campaigned for Sharmahd’s release.