An Iranian-American man has been executed in Iran for a crime he allegedly committed in California seven years ago – even though there is no judicial treaty between Iran and the US, making it impossible for Iranian authorities to have gathered information from their American counterparts.

Hamid Sameie, also known as Sam, was hanged last month in Rajaee Shahr prison in Karaj, west of the capital Tehran, after being found guilty in an Iranian court of murdering another dual national in Los Angeles in 2008.



The government-run Iran newspaper reported that the execution took place but provided few details. According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group, however, Sameie was sentenced to death for the murder of a man identified as Behrouz Janmohammadi. His close associates have told IHR that it was an act of self-defence.

But details of the crime remain hazy. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2008 that a 46-year-old man, identified as Abdollah Janmohammadi, was found shot to death in his home in Woodland Hills. “Los Angeles police, responding to a suspicious death report, found Janmohammadi shot multiple times in the head and abdomen about 9.20am [on Friday, 28 November 2008].”



It was not immediately clear if Sameie was charged for the murder in the US – or even sought by police. Despite the Los Angeles Times report, a spokesman for the Los Angeles police department said on Tuesday that case files appeared to show no record of a criminal investigation into the death of a person named Janmohammadi.

The unusual case highlights the rising use of capital punishment in Iran, especially one in which the death penalty is handed down solely based on confessions taken from the convict while in custody.



Activists say the so-called confessions are made under duress, but Iranian judges have routinely relied on them in handing down their judgements in cases involving a wide range of prisoners, from political inmates to criminals.

Moreover, Iran does not recognise dual nationality and treat those with such status only as Iranian, depriving them of consular access. The US does not have an embassy in Tehran and is instead represented by an interest section in the Swiss embassy. Jason Rezaian, the imprisoned Washington Post journalist held in Iran on on spying charges for over a year, has not been allowed consular visits.

Sameie, who had a car sales business in Los Angeles – home to a large population of Iranian exiles – was believed to have been a friend and a former business partner of Janmohammadi before they fell out.



“Hamid and Behrouz were friends in California until they were involved in an altercation that resulted in Behrouz drawing a knife on Hamid; and Hamid exercised self-defence, which resulted in Behrouz’s death,” according to an individual close to Samieie who spoke to the IHR on condition of anonymity.

“Following the incident, Hamid managed to make his way back to Iran where he was arrested by authorities just a few months after his arrival,” the source said.

It is not clear if Sameie’s return to Iran was an attempt to escape US justice, but according to IHR his presence in the country was reported to Iran authorities by the victim’s family.

“Hamid endured extreme torture and was forced to confess against himself, and a lot of his confessions were false. Iranian authorities extracted forced confessions from Hamid even before the murder scene was reconstructed and the murder weapon discovered. Authorities did not even consider Hamid’s testimony that he acted in self defence; all they cared about was that Hamid confessed the way they instructed him to,” the unnamed associate told IHR.

Sameie’s body is believed to have been returned to his family after his execution and he has been buried in a cemetery close to Tehran.

The US State Department said on Tuesday that it was not in a position to confirm that an Iranian American had been executed, but said it was investigating the reports through the Swiss embassy in Tehran.



Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, co-founder and spokesperson for IHR, told the Guardian that his organisation had received confirmation of the execution from several sources inside and outside the prison.

“He faced an unfair trial in Iran, where there was no jury and the murder scene could not have been reconstructed,” he said. “He was executed solely based on forced confessions, a familiar pattern we are seeing a lot in the Iranian judicial system at the moment. His case is not unique and the issue around forces confessions is a huge issue in Iran.”

In a recent case, highlighting the confessions flaw, a man who had confessed to the killing of one of his employees was proved innocent only 48 hours before his scheduled execution, the state-run Jam-e-Jam newspaper reported in 2013.



Amiry-Moghaddam said his organisation has documented the execution of at least 850 convicts since the beginning of 2015, the highest annual rate in at least 25 years. Most put to death are held for drug offences. Murder cases come second but political prisoners, including Sunni Kurds, have also been executed in recent years.



Iran is increasingly becoming unsafe for dual nationals with intelligence authorities, who have deep suspicion of those with links to a foreign country, accused of cherry-picking such citizens for political reasons, often for making political gains from the western country they come from.



Additional reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles

