VOA cannot independently verify the activities of the Sharmahd family’s lawyer, as it is barred from reporting inside the Islamist-ruled country. Jamshid Sharmahd went missing in late July as he was making a stop in Dubai while trying to book an onward flight to India for a business trip, according to his family. Media reported on August 1 that intelligence agents had captured the 65-year-old German dual national in a “complex operation” without specifying exactly when or where he had been detained. On the same day, Iranian state TV aired a program in which the dissident appeared to confess to masterminding a 2008 bomb attack that and wounded 215 others at a mosque in the southwestern city of Shiraz.
