A California-based member of an Iranian militant opposition group in exile was abducted by Iran while staying in Dubai, his family said Tuesday.
The suspected cross-border abduction of Jamshid Sharmahd appears corroborated by mobile phone location data, shared by his family with The Associated Press, that suggests he was taken to neighboring Oman before heading to Iran.
Iran hasn't said how it detained Sharmahd, though the announcement came against the backdrop of covert actions conducted by Iran amid heightened tensions with the U.S. over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran accuses Sharmahd, 65, of Glendora, California of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others, as well as plotting other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing. It aired an interview of him on state television — footage that resembled many other suspected coerced confessions broadcast by the Iranian government in the last decade.
His family, however, insists Sharmahd only served as a spokesman for the group and had nothing to do with any attacks in Iran. Sharmahd, who supports restoring Iran's monarchy that was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, already had been targeted in an apparent Iranian assassination plot on U.S. soil in 2009.
“We’re seeking support from any democratic country, any free country," his son Shayan Sharmahd told the AP. "It is a violation of human rights. You can’t just pick someone up in a third country and drag them into your country.”
Iran's Intelligence Ministry has not elaborated on how it detained the elder Sharmahd, other than to deny he was arrested in Tajikistan. The ministry and Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sharmahd had been in Dubai, trying to travel to India for a business deal involving his software company, his son said. He was hoping to get a connecting flight despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic disrupting global travel.
Sharmahd's family received the last message from him on July 28. After that, he no longer responded to their calls and messages, his son said. Telephone location data showed his mobile phone that day at the Premier Inn Dubai International Airport Hotel, where he had been staying.
It's unclear how the abduction happened. A hotel operator said Sharmahd had checked out July 29. Tracking data showed Sharmahd's mobile phone traveled south from Dubai to the city of Al Ain on July 29, crossing the border into Oman and staying overnight near an Islamic school in the border city of al-Buraimi.
On July 30, tracking data showed the mobile phone traveled to the Omani port city of Sohar, where the signal stopped.
Two days later, on Saturday, Iran announced it had captured Sharmahd in a “complex operation." The Intelligence Ministry published a photograph of him blindfolded.
His son said he believed that in the state TV footage, Sharmahd hurriedly read whatever Iran wanted him to say.
“Imagine your own father being tied up one day on television and you see that," Shayan Sharmahd said.
Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in Dubai and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living in the city-state. Iran is suspected of kidnapping and later killing British-Iranian national Abbas Yazdi in Dubai in 2013, though Tehran has denied involvement.
It isn't just Iran that maintains a presence in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, home to some 5,000 U.S. troops and the U.S. Navy's busiest port of call outside of America. The U.S. State Department runs its Iran Regional Presence Office in Dubai, where diplomats monitor Iranian media reports and talk to Iranians.
Dubai's hotels long have been targeted by intelligence operatives, such as in the suspected 2010 assassination by the Israeli Mossad of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai and the rest of the UAE have since invested even more in an elaborate surveillance network.
Dubai police and officials, as well as federal officials in Abu Dhabi and the Omani Embassy in Washington, did not respond to requests for comment.
The UAE has long been trying to de-escalate tensions with Iran after President Donald Trump's maximum pressure campaign saw him pull out of the nuclear deal. On Sunday, Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan held a videoconference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
However, over the last year, a series of escalating incidents have shaken the wider Mideast, leading to a U.S. drone strike in January that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad and an Iranian ballistic missile attack that injured dozens of American soldiers in Iraq. Also, there have been explosions on oil tankers off the Emirati coast that the U.S. Navy has blamed on Iranian limpet mines.
Last month, an oil tanker seized by the UAE after being suspected of smuggling Iranian crude oil was hijacked, likely by Iran. In June, Iran sentenced to death another opposition journalist living in Paris it detained under unclear circumstances.
For now, Sharmahd's family said they contacted the government in Germany, where he holds citizenship, and the U.S. government as he's lived for years in America and was on track for citizenship after the 2009 assassination plot.
The German Embassy in Tehran has asked Iranian authorities for consular access, according to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, hoping to understand how Sharmahd was arrested. However, Iran doesn't allow consular access for its dual nationals, considering them exclusively Iranian citizens.
The State Department, which mistakenly referred to Sharmahd in an earlier report as an American citizen, acknowledged his arrest and said Iran “has a long history of detaining Iranians and foreign nationals on spurious charges.”
While Iran has yet to say what charges Sharmahd faces, others detained over the 2008 bombing have been convicted and executed. Sharmahd's son said his father suffers from Parkinson's disease, as well as diabetes and heart trouble that require medication and careful monitoring.
Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday he was praying for loved ones and all those left behind after he met privately with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. The visit came just a week after he sat down with the grieving relatives of two cops killed in upstate New York.
“The entire nation is grieving with these families," he said from his second stop of the day in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he was announcing new measures to cut lead pipes from the water supply.
Biden detoured to Charlotte for the visit that took place with little fanfare behind closed doors, as the White House wanted Biden to be seen as respecting the privacy of grieving families and avoiding the appearance of using their grief for political purposes. He also met with officers wounded during the shooting, and wished them a fast recovery.
The president took a short motorcade across the airport to the North Carolina Air National Guard base to meet the group, which included elected officials. The location was an alternative to traveling into the city and was chosen as the least taxing one for local law enforcement officers who are still reeling from the deaths but who would have a hand in securing the president's trip.
“The men and women of law enforcement, you represent the best of us,” he said from the podium at the second stop.
Once again, Biden was seeking to be an empathetic leader for a community reeling from gun violence, while also calling for stricter rules around firearms and more money for law enforcement on the front lines.
Four officers were killed this week in North Carolina, when a wanted man opened fire on a joint agency task force that had come to arrest him on a warrant for possession of a firearm as an ex-felon, and fleeing to elude capture. They were: Sam Poloche and William Elliott of the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Officer Joshua Eyer; and Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Weeks.
Four other officers were wounded in the gunfire; the suspect was killed. An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 40-caliber handgun and ammunition were found at the scene.
An AR-15 is among the weapons most often used in mass shootings, and it's the type of gun Biden is talking about when he says the U.S. should ban “ assault weapons.” Congress passed the most comprehensive gun control legislation in decades in 2022, after a horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But it didn't go far enough, Biden often says.
And as he campaigns for the 2024 election, Biden has made curbing gun violence a major campaign platform, elusive to Democrats even during the Obama era, as he fends off attacks from Republican challenger Donald Trump that he is soft on crime and anti-police.
“We have to get them the resources they need to do their job,” Biden said of law enforcement. “And keep the weapons of war" out of the wrong hands.
The violence came just about two weeks after another fatal shooting of law enforcement officers in Syracuse, New York; Lieutenant Michael Hoosock and Officer Michael Jensen were killed while looking for a driver who fled a traffic stop. After his speech, Biden met relatives of both of the officers’ families.
Biden had already been scheduled to come to Syracuse to celebrate Micron Technology’s plans to build a campus of computer chip factories, but the local police union said officers were still coming to terms with the deaths and weren’t happy with the president’s trip and had hoped he would delay.
On Thursday from Wilmington, Biden announced his administration was providing states with an additional $3 billion to replace lead pipes across the country, building on $5.8 billion for water infrastructure projects around the country announced in February.
“There’s no safe level of lead exposure," he said. “None. The only way forward is to replace every lead service line that connects clean water.”
Money for the pipe replacement comes from one of the administration’s key legislative victories, the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that Biden signed in 2021. The infrastructure law includes over $50 billion to upgrade America’s water infrastructure.
The new round of funding will help pay for projects nationwide as Biden seeks to replace all lead pipes in the country.
“We’re going to get it done,” he said.
EPA estimates that North Carolina has 370,000 lead pipes, and $76 million will go to replace them statewide. Biden also will meet with faculty and students at a Wilmington school that replaced a water fountain with high levels of lead with money from the law.
Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly and Josh Boak contributed to this story.
President Joe Biden waves as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden met with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden is greeted by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, left, as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden is meeting with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden salutes Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Johnny Jennings, as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden is meeting with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden, right, speaks with Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Vi Lyles, bottom center, and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, top center, as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden is meeting with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden boards Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden met with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
U.S. Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis, center, speaks with President Joe Biden, as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden is meeting with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden greets Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Johnny Jennings, as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden is meeting with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden waves as he walks to board Air Force One, Thursday, May 2, 2024, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Biden is going to North Carolina. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Joe Biden salutes Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Johnny Jennings, as he arrives on Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. Biden is meeting with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the CHIPS and Science Act at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Syracuse, N.Y. Twenty-six Republican attorneys general filed lawsuits Wednesday, May 1, challenging a new Biden administration rule requiring firearms dealers across the United States to run background checks on buyers at gun shows and other places outside brick-and-mortar stores. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
