Germany’s Foreign Office summoned the head of the Iranian embassy in Berlin to protest the execution of the German-Iranian dual national Jamshid Sharmahd by the Iranian regime.

The Foreign Office denounced the “murder” of Mr Sharmahd on Tuesday and said that the German ambassador in Tehran, Markus Potzel, also appeared before the Iranian foreign minister to protest the killing in “the strongest terms.”

Mr Potzel had subsequently been recalled to Berlin by German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock for further consultations, according to the Foreign Office.

Iran’s judiciary announced Mr Sharmahd’s execution on Monday.

He had been sentenced to death in the spring of 2023 in a controversial trial on alleged terror charges.

Relatives and human rights activists vehemently rejected the accusations against him.

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

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

Mr Baerbock stated that Mr Sharmahd’s killing “shows what an inhumane regime is in power there: a regime that uses death as a weapon against its youth, its own population and foreign nationals.”

Mr Baerbock said that Germany had repeatedly sent high-ranking diplomatic teams to Tehran to try to prevent Sharmahd’s execution.

“In doing so, we repeatedly made it unequivocally clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen would have serious consequences,” she said in a post on X.

(dpa/NAN)