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Jailed Church of Iran Leader Released
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
TEHRAN (Worthy News) – A leader of the Church of Iran, one of the Islamic Republic’s largest evangelical house church movements, was free Monday after being released from Minab prison in Hormozgan province in southern Iran, Christians told Worthy News.
Matthias (Abdulreza Ali) Haghnejad was reportedly freed on December 14, but his release was confirmed later.
Pastor Haghnejad had been serving a six-year sentence on charges including “acting against the security of the country by forming a group and propagating Christianity outside the church and in the house church.” He was also accused of “giving information to the enemies of Islam,” Worthy News learned.
Trial observers said the pastor had been acquitted of these same charges in 2014, yet they were reinstated in January 2022.
The charges were again introduced after he was acquitted of “endangering state security” and “promoting Zionist Christianity,” for which he spent some three years in jail from February 2019 to December 2021, Christians said.
He was detained on the reinstated charges along with two other Christians in Anzali city in Iran’s Gilan Province on December 26, 2022, confirmed by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), an advocacy group supporting them.
“Pastor Haghnejad was transferred to Minab prison, which is over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from his home in Bandar Anzali, in July 2023. [It happened] shortly after [he was] being accused of undermining state security by a couple from the Church of Iran denomination who was pressurized into incriminating him and another Church of Iran leader, Yousef Nadarkhani,” CSW added in a statement sent to Worthy News. “The accusation was made although Pastor Haghnejad has never met the couple, and Pastor Nadarkhani only has a vague acquaintance with them.”
EARLY RELEASE
Nadarkhani, a well-known pastor in the Church of Iran denomination, was granted early release in February last year from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where he served a six-year sentence for his house-church activities.
His sentence was originally ten years but reduced following a retrial in May 2020.
Nadarkhani, a former Muslim, previously spent three years on death row for “apostasy,” the word used for abandoning Islam, until his acquittal in 2012.
CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas told Worthy News that while his group welcomes “the release of Pastor Haghnejad, we maintain he was detained unjustly following a process amounting to double jeopardy.”
He added that CSW is urging “the Iranian authorities to release all other prisoners currently imprisoned in relation to their religion or belief,” including Christians.
“We also urge Iran to end its effective criminalization of Christianity and to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to freedom of religion or belief for every citizen regardless of their religious affiliation or belief.”
Iran’s strict Islamic leadership has come under growing domestic and international pressure to allow more religious freedom in the nation where Christians form a thriving minority.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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