California man, member of an Iranian militant group abducted by Iran in Dubai, report

A California man who is a member of an Iranian militant opposition group was reportedly abducted by Iran while staying in Dubai.

The purported abduction of Jamshid Sharmahd, in exile in the U.S., was reported by his family to the Associated Press.

The wire service reports the suspected cross-border abduction appears corroborated by mobile phone location data, which was shared by his family and suggests Sharmahd was taken to neighboring Oman before heading to Iran.

Iran has accused 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, the wire service also reports. 

Sharmahd’s family says he 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.