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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.

Iran executes German dual national over charges of ‘corruption on Earth’

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He was sentenced to death in February 2023 for “corruption on Earth,” and was accused of being involved in the 2008 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Shiraz that led to the deaths of 14 people and over 200 others injured.

Iran executed a 69-year-old German-Iranian software developer and US resident, Jamshid Sharmahd on Monday, October 28, following years of imprisonment.

Sharmahd’s case


Sharmahd was abducted by Iranian agents in 2020 when he was on a visit to the United Arab Emirates. The Iranian authorities said he was arrested during a “complex operation” but specific information remains ambiguous. He was sentenced to death in February 2023 for “corruption on Earth,” and was accused of being involved in the 2008 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Shiraz that led to the deaths of 14 people and over 200 others injured. His family has consistently maintained his innocence, asserting that the allegations against him were fabricated.

The US green card holder’s execution comes two days after the Israeli airstrikes on the Iranian military base. Iranian authorities claim that America permitted Israel to utilize Iraq’s airspace to conduct the attack, stating Washington as the” accomplice of Israel”.

International reactions


Following the execution, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock expressed profound outrage, stating that the decision reflects the “inhumane regime” governing Iran, which uses capital punishment against foreign nationals. She further noted that Berlin urged Iran that there would be grave repercussions in case they prosecuted a German citizen to death.

Similarly, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the verdict as unbalanced and called for a fair trial for Sharmahd.

In a series of posts on X, Baerbock expressed her outrage and wrote,” I condemn the murder of Jamshid Sharmahd by the Iranian regime in the strongest possible terms. Abducted from Dubai to Iran and held for years without a fair trial, he was killed today. My deepest sympathy goes out to his family for this terrible loss.”

“We have campaigned tirelessly for Jamshid Sharmahd and sent a high-ranking team from the Foreign Office to Tehran on several occasions. We have repeatedly made it clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences,” she wrote.

“The killing of Jamshid Sharmahd shows what kind of inhumane regime is in place there: a regime that uses death against its youth, its own population and foreign nationals. Even under the new government, no one is safe in Iran, she added.

In a report issued in May, Amnesty said Iran conducted the most executions of any country in the world after China in the last year, and nearly 75 percent of worldwide executions in 2023 outside China were in Iran.

The recent wave of executions has taken the total number of hangings in Iran this year to more than 567 persons which includes 20 women, according to the human rights groups.

HRNA reported that at least 811 people were executed in Iran from October 10, 2023, to October 8, 2024, coinciding with the annual World Day Against the Death Penalty.

Source: siasat.com, Staff, October 29, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________








"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde



Location: Iran
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