Nine Iranian Christians from Rasht facing national security charges. Currently at least 20 Christians are jailed in Iran because their faith was deemed a threat to the Islamic republic’s national security. Of the more than 100 Iranian believers imprisoned since 2012, all have faced similar charges. Read This Issue More Newsletters But a recent decision by a Supreme Court justice gives hope to them all. “Merely preaching Christianity … through family gatherings [house churches] is not a manifestation of gathering and collusion to disrupt the security of the country, whether internally or externally,” stated the judge. “The promotion of Christianity and the formation of a house church is not criminalized in law.” Two years ago, nine converts from the non-Trinitarian Church of Iran in Rasht, 200 miles northeast of Tehran near the Caspian Sea, were arrested in raids on their homes and church. Sentenced to a five-year prison term in October 2019, Abdolreza Ali Haghnejad, Shahrooz Eslamdoust, Behnam Akhlaghi, Babak Hosseinzadeh, Mehdi Khatibi, Khalil Dehghanpour, Hossein Kadivar, Kamal Naamanian, and Mohammad Vafadar are now eligible for release. The ruling, announced November 24, is “unprecedented,” according to multiple Iranian Christians and international advocates. “The judge’s main argument is what we […]
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