BERLIN (AP) — Germany protested to Iran on Tuesday over the execution of Iranian German prisoner Jamshid Sharmahd, who was kidnapped in Dubai in 2020 by Iranian security forces, and recalled its ambassador to Berlin for consultations.

The Foreign Ministry wrote on the social network X that Iran’s charge d’affaires in Berlin was summoned to hear “our sharp protest” against Tehran’s action and added that it reserves the right to take “further measures.” It didn’t elaborate.

At the same time, German Ambassador Markus Potzel “protested in the strongest terms against the murder of Jamshid Sharmahd” to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, it said. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock then recalled Potzel to Berlin for consultations.

Sharmahd, 69, was put to death in Iran on Monday on terrorism charges, the country’s judiciary said. That followed a 2023 trial that Germany, the U.S. and international rights groups dismissed as a sham.

He was one of several Iranian dissidents abroad in recent years either tricked or kidnapped back to Iran as Tehran began lashing out after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers including Germany.

Iran accused Sharmahd, who lived in Glendora, California, of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people — including five women and a child — and wounded over 200 others, as well as plotting other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing.

Iran also accused Sharmahd of “disclosing classified information” on missile sites of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard during a television program in 2017.

His family disputed the allegations and had worked for years to see him freed.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that Potzel had been summoned by the country’s Foreign Ministry to protest the stance of some German authorities regarding the Iranian judiciary, and that he was told everyone is equal before the law.

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