The daughter of a German-American journalist who died in the custody of Iran and whose body was returned mutilated and missing body parts urged the Trump administration on Sunday to pull the plug on nuclear talks with the Islamic Republic.
Jamshid “Jimmy” Sharmahd, 69, a California resident who was kidnapped while on a business trip in the United Arab Emirates in 2020 and taken to Tehran, was executed in October. His daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, told Fox News Digital his body was returned bearing horrific signs of torture.
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“I traveled to Berlin with my family not to embrace my freed father after five years of torture by these terrorists, but to receive his mutilated body in a box,” she said. “The regime did not only torture my father physically and mentally for more than 1,500 days as the U.S. Biden administration and Germany was watching idly, even after killing my father they cut out his organs.”
Gazelle Sharmahd said an autopsy report showed her father’s tongue, larynx, thyroid and heart were missing, and he only had two teeth.
Sharmahd’s daughter said her father had Parkinson’s disease and was being held in isolation. (Sharmahd family)
The daughter, who fruitlessly lobbied the Biden administration to free her father, said the U.S. and Germany should not negotiate with a nation capable of such atrocities.
“On the day that a German-American patriot and hostage was returned in pieces in a casket, with his tongue and heart cut out, barely recognizable to my family and me, Germany and the U.S. consider sitting down with the killers of their dual national hostage,” she said.
The Trump administration started indirect talks with Iran’s clerical regime on Saturday in Oman, a Mideast country, where Jimmy was taken after he was kidnapped in the UAE and later moved to Iran.
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Sharmahd, who was a sharp critic of the regime in Tehran, was considered an American national under the Levinson Act, according to the family’s lawyer, Jason Poblete, who is an expert on victims kidnapped by totalitarian regimes.
The Levinson Act defines a “United States national” as a “lawful permanent resident with significant ties to the United States.” According to the State Department, the definition applies to non-U.S. citizens.
The act was named after Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent and private investigator who disappeared from an Iranian island in 2007. Levinson was held hostage and was declared dead in 2020 when he was said to have died in Iranian custody. His family blamed the Iranian regime for his capture and imprisonment.
The FBI said it received this image of Robert Levinson in April 2011, four years after his disappearance. (FBI)
Gazelle Sharmahd called on FBI Director Kash Patel and German authorities to investigate the murder of her father and issue arrest warrants for the Iranian regime officials responsible for his summary execution.
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She received support from the German-Iranian community. Behrouz Asadi, a prominent German-Iranian human rights activist, sent a letter to the German federal prosecutor, Jens Rommel, about Jimmy’s case.
“We urge you to initiate criminal investigations against those responsible in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially those directly or indirectly responsible for his abduction, imprisonment, torture, and ultimately his killing,” Asadi wrote.
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Poblete posted on X that Jimmy Sharmahd’s murder was “the result of a brutal regime acting with impunity—and of systemic failures by both the United States and Germany, who did not do enough. This is what happens when Americans and other U.S. nationals held hostage/unjustly detained are abandoned abroad. As Jimmy starts his journey home, our prayers are with the Sharmahd family. Justice for Jimmy will be pursued—relentlessly and without pause. We call on the media and all Americans to NeverForget Jimmy and to keep US nationals foremost on their minds when discussing hostage issues and engaging partners, allies, and adversaries.”
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Sharmahd said she believes German Christian Democratic party politician Friedrich Merz, who is expected to become chancellor in May, and President Donald Trump will stand up to terrorist regimes in ways their predecessors did not.
“President Trump is newly elected but has promised to stand with hostages and stand up to jihadists, be it Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis or the biggest one, the Islamic regime in Iran,” she said.