Omid Kokabee gets 10 years in jail for ‘communicating with a hostile government’

“During these three months, authorities never answered any of our requests or questions, and the numerous letters I wrote were left unanswered. Only some reliable sources whose names I cannot reveal said that Saeed’s interrogators do not authorize visits for him. Even when the case judge issued a permit for visitations for Saeed, we were not allowed to see him. We guess that because they took Saeed in front of a television camera three times in order for him to make confessions and to show that he was remorseful and each time Saeed refused to give a confession, perhaps they did not allow him to have visitors to punish him,” said Maryam Malekpour.

36-year-old Saeed Malekpour, a web developer and resident of Canada, has been sentenced to death on the charge of “insulting Islamic sanctities,” for alleged “management of pornographic websites.” Malekpour’s family has maintained that he simply developed image-sharing software that was used, without his knowledge, to post pornographic photos.

Maryam Malekpour told the Campaign that authorities have not given her brother clear information about his upcoming execution: ” …  [W]e were able to see Saeed two weeks ago. Saeed’s morale was good. They had not informed him of the confirmation of his death sentence, so we didn’t tell him anything either, lest the news upsets him. His death sentence remains in the Judiciary’s Sentence Enforcement Unit. Neither he nor his lawyers have been served the confirmation, but we are really fearful that his death sentence may be carried out suddenly.”

“I heard a while back through Saeed’s cellmates that he has developed kidney stones and is in a lot of pain. His cellmates had also asked the prison guards several times to take him to a doctor, but they only transferred him to the prison infirmary. When I heard this I spoke with a specialist and got him his medicine and sent it to him,” added Maryam Malekpour, explaining that since he has begun taking the medicine, his condition has improved.

Security forces arrested Canadian resident Saeed Malekpour, 36, when he returned to Iran in 2008 to visit his ailing father. He appeared on Iranian state TV in 2009 and confessed to charges raised against him. In October 2010 he was sentenced to death on charges of “insulting Islamic sanctities” for alleged “management of pornographic websites.” The Supreme Court overturned the sentence in November 2011 because of deficiencies in investigations and insufficient evidence, and forwarded his case to the Revolutionary Court. Even so, the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on 30 January 2012.

A source in the Iranian government told the Campaign that Iran’s drive to restrict the ability of foreign media to operate freely in Iran is due to the fears of some officials that international press coverage can undermine their political interests.

(14 May 2012) Iranian authorities should end their undue restrictions on and intimidation of foreign-based journalists and media outlets, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today.

“Iranian authorities have long been repressing domestic journalists. Now it’s clear that they have turned an eye to neutering international press freedoms also,” said Campaign spokesperson Hadi Ghaemi. “We are increasingly seeing Iranian authorities using intimidation, arrests, censorship, and other methods to restrict foreign media from reporting on Iran.”

A source in the Iranian government, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Campaign that Iran’s drive to restrict the ability of foreign media to operate freely in Iran is due to the fears of some officials that international press coverage can undermine their political interests.

“The Intelligence Ministry, the Revolutionary Guards, and the National Security Council are pressuring the Deputy Minister of Culture who oversees the foreign press to give [these security agencies] more control over the way foreign media reports Iran’s politics and economy, as we approach the 2013 presidential election,” the government source said.

The government source also said that the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit is more active than other intelligence agencies in curbing press freedom in Iran. “The Guards believe that the Iranian government showed negligence and ineptitude in allowing foreign journalists to cover the 2009 presidential election and post-election unrest. So, they are trying to exert more control over the presence of foreign journalists in Iran,” the government source said.

Since the June 2009 election, authorities have threatened and interrogated several journalists, contributors, and their family members, as well as Iranians appearing in foreign media, including BBC Persian, Reuters, Newsweek magazine, and The New Yorker magazine.

Sources reported that Iranian intelligence officers threatened a Reuters journalist after the release of a video report about female ninjas in Iran.

On 16 February 2012, London-based Reuters News Agency released a report profiling Iranian women practicing the Japanese martial art of Ninjutsu. The report, originally entitled Thousands of Female Ninjas Train as Iran’s Assassins, misleadingly and distastefully referred to the female athletes as “assassins.” As a result, Iran suspended the press licenses of 11 Reuters journalists in Iran.

Press TV, an English-language news network run by the Iranian government, reported that the women in the Reuters report were pursuing a defamation lawsuit against Reuters.

The Campaign has recently learned that a few days after the ninja video’s release, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture (Ministry of Culture) summoned the journalist who was responsible for the report. According to an eyewitness, when the reporter was at the Ministry of Culture’s offices in Tehran, the staff left the offices at one point, and then officers from the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit arrived and interrogated the reporter for several hours. The eyewitness said that the reporter was extremely frightened and was shaking after the interrogation session by the Revolutionary Guards.

The aforementioned government source alleged that representatives of the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit told the Ministry of Culture that “no word was to be said about the interrogation session.”

The Reuters reporter was also allegedly threatened and told that she should not speak about the interrogation, or else she and her family will face further difficulties. The government source claimed that authorities told the Reuters office in Tehran that if any news about the interrogation was ever published, their offices would never re-open.

“Iranian intelligence and security agencies are resorting to harassment, intimidation, censorship, and arrest of foreign media that produces stories it disapproves of in order to exert undue control over news coverage,” said Ghaemi. “The Minister of Culture himself has a responsibility to make sure security agencies don’t use his office to conduct politically-motivated intimidation campaigns against journalists.”

Laura Secor, contributor to The New Yorker magazine, described to the Campaign how Iranian officials tried to limit her ability to report on the March 2012 parliamentary elections.

“The week of the parliamentary election, visiting foreign correspondents were forced to comply, at times, with a program that confined us to buses and kept us together as a group and under watch,” Secor wrote in an email to the Campaign. “On the day of the election, we were expected to spend eleven hours on a bus, being taken to polling stations together with Iranian state television, which was filming us, and intelligence agents who were watching us. The only other option was to go back to our hotels, which we were forbidden to leave.”

“Over the course of the week, at least two of us were detained and questioned. In my case, I was questioned about my movements and my contacts, I was accused of being a spy, and some of my personal papers were confiscated,” Secor added.

Secor details her account in full in the 7 May 2012 issue of The New Yorker.

Since 2009, the number of foreign journalists allowed to enter and operate in the country has decreased notably. One Canadian journalist told the Campaign that Iranian authorities told her directly that they were rejecting her visa application because they were unhappy with her past coverage of Iranian affairs.

In practice, the Ministry of Culture keeps a file, which includes all published reports, of all foreign journalists working in Iran. This file is used when authorities decide whether or not to grant visas to applicants looking to enter Iran as journalists.

“In selecting journalists to report from Iran, a general effort was made to select reporters who had never covered Iran, or who had never published critical articles; though a few experienced reporters were also included in the list,” the government source told the Campaign.

As a result of growing restrictions on foreign journalists, only a limited number of journalists were invited to cover the Iranian Parliamentary elections this past March, the government source explained to the Campaign.

The Campaign has also previously reported the government’s obsessive attack on BBC Persian, which included satellite jamming, harassment of BBC journalists, and arrests of BBC contributors. In September 2011, authorities detained six independent documentary filmmakers because their films were licensed and aired on BBC Persian. In late January 2012, authorities seized a family member of a BBC Persian employee based in London, and then tried to pressure the family member to denounce the employee’s work with BBC Persian.

“A family member of one of the BBC Persian employees was detained and pressured to make online connections with the BBC employee,” Sadeq Saba, the head of BBC Persian, told the Campaign. “During that communication, the BBC employee was remotely interrogated to get information about BBC,” he continued.

Recently, Iran’s Press TV broadcast a report critical of BBC Persian called “Eye on the Fox.” In the report, several prisoners were shown “confessing” to working for BBC Persian, an act the government sees as a crime. The footage, reportedly provided to Press TV by the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit, was filmed secretly in Evin Prison interrogation rooms. The government’s Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) ran a similar program for domestic audiences.

According to the Campaign’s source inside the government, this production was not solely a media operation.

“Press TV is acting as the media arm of the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit at this time. This is why during the production of ‘Eye on the Fox,’ an IRIB program about the BBC, some of the film’s components were compiled by the Intelligence Unit. They use Press TV to put pressure on different media outlets,” the government source said.

Iranian intelligence agencies have a track record of using coercion and torture to extract false statements and confessions. At times, intelligences officers have worked closely with Press TV and other state media outlets to film and televise forced confessions, often of detainees before they have faced trial. Maziar Bahari, a former reporter for US-based Newsweek magazine, reported being made to make such a taped confession in July 2009.

According to the government source, Press TV was the government agency that turned the Reuters ninja report into a controversy. Reuters’ Tehran bureau was shut down only after Press TV complained publicly about the Reuters report. Press TV plays an important role in the Iranian government’s efforts to monitor and limit foreign media. “The channel [Press TV] has become the government’s watchdog as well as its prosecutor, judge, and jury when it comes to the foreign media,” said the Iranian government insider.

“In my opinion, Press TV, as the media arm of the Iranian government in general and the IRGC [Revolutionary Guard] in particular, tries to cut off the flow of information between Iran and the rest of the world,” Maziar Bahari told the Campaign.

“They try to do this through different means,” he continued. “First, they try to poison the environment through Press TV and to slander different individuals in the media. The second step is to try, through legal means, to prevent the activities of foreign press and media. The third step, which is a well-known and established method in Iran, is to use threats, force, and dismissal of reporters to limit and control their efforts to disseminate the news,” Bahari said.

“Foreign journalists, more than domestic journalists, need government cooperation to be able to work in the country,” Campaign spokesperson Ghaemi said.“Because of the fear that they might not get visas or might lose their ability to work in Iran, some journalists do not expose these threats and intimidation. But the government has taken advantage of this fear to prevent the international press from reporting critically on Iran.”

Dadkhah told the Campaign that he would never make fake confessions. “They told me that if I didn’t confess, they would enforce my sentence. They talked to me for long periods of time and I did not accept it. I will say now that if one day I say things, they are not credible and I must have been under conditions where I was forced to say those things. I hope God maintains my power.”

“Under intense pressure, they asked me to say before television cameras that the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) received funds from foreigners, meaning that we were operators for foreigners, which is not true,” said Dadkhah. The now-banned Defenders of Human Rights Center was co-founded by prominent human rights lawyers including Narges Mohammadi, Abdolfattah Soltani, Mohammad Seifzadeh, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Dadkhah described the work of the DHRC: “We were a number of lawyers who for our love for our land, our capabilities, and our professional knowledge started the Center and we worked there. Among Iranian lawyers, perhaps a group like ours is rare, a group that has knowledge, capability, and awareness about their work and is so affectionate towards our homeland.”

On 28 April, when Mohammad Ali Dadkhah appeared at Branch 15 of Tehran Revolutionary Court to defend his client, Arjang Davoodi, who has been sentenced to death, the Judge informed him that he was not allowed to defend his client, as his nine-year prison sentence has been upheld by an Appeals Court, and that he would be sent to prison soon.

The prominent lawyer has represented dozens of cases of prisoners of conscience, including Ebrahim Yazdi, Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, and Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor sentenced to death for moharebeh (enmity with God).

“I believe it unjust to put someone under pressure and tell him to go talk on television and say that he received money from abroad. I was nominated for several foreign awards, and I said that I would only accept these awards if they are not accompanied with money. I have only accepted awards that have no money. Also, I never received any money from my clients whom I defended for their human rights and I consider this my honor. Now, I find it inappropriate for myself to go say those things on TV,” Dadkhah told the Campaign.

When asked what would happen to his clients’ cases when he is sent to prison, he said, “Those who have violated my human rights should answer that. I have done nothing but to do my professional work. My field is international law. My human rights thesis received an A+. If there is a fair and just system, I should not be treated like this.”

Related Links: Prominent Lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah Sentenced To Nine Years

Lawyer’s ‘Nationalism’ on Par with Apostasy Says Deputy Prosecutor

On 20 May 2011, Branch 15 of Tehran Revolutionary Court tried Dadkhah on multiple charges such as “membership in the Defenders of Human Rights Center,” “interviewing with foreign media,” and “representing the Isfahan Underground Metro case.” According to the lower court’s ruling, which was announced in July 2011, he was sentenced to nine years in prison and a ten-year ban on practicing and teaching law. The appeals court upheld Dadkhah’s sentence in its entirety.

Currently, almost all prominent members of the DHRC, including Nasrin Sotoudeh, are in prison.

Kasra Nouri, a member of the Gonabadi Dervish order, was ordered to remain in detention just prior to his release. Authorities have increasingly targeted Gonabadi Dervishes, arresting over 100 in the past year.

Just prior to his release, Kasra Nouri, a member of the Gonabadi Dervish order, was ordered to remain in prison, his mother, Shokoofeh Yadollahi told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“Following the efforts of the lawyer and the family, Kasra was supposed to have been released last week, but, unfortunately, on orders from the investigative judge in charge of Kasra’s file, his detention orders have been extended,” Yadollahi told the Campaign. “I hope he is released soon, as my son does not deserve to be detained. He is just a Dervish and should not be detained for being a Dervish or for interviewing with a news outlet,” she added.

On 14 March 2012, Kasra Nouri was arrested on the charges of “propagating against the regime in favor of foreigners” and “contact and interview with Radio Farda.”

Yadollahi explained to the Campaign that her son has faced bad prison conditions, particularly the two weeks he spent inside the Quarantine Ward of Shiraz Central Prison: “This detention center has tragic conditions and its inmates are exposed to the worst hygienic circumstances. The inhumane treatment by authorities and interrogators, accompanied with torture, is against laws for citizens’ rights.”

Nouri had also spent some time in the Detention Center of the Shiraz Intelligence Office, unbeknownst to his family. “After several days of no information about the detention location of my son and a search by his family and lawyer, it turned out that Kasra had been transferred to the Shiraz Intelligence Office’s Detention Center, known as No. 100. After multiple attempts, we were able to visit with him on Tuesday, 11 April, a whole month after his arrest,” said Shokoofeh Yadollahi.

Nouri’s mother added that her son had previously been arrested on 11 January 2012 on the charges of “acting against the regime” and “membership in a deviant group.” After spending 46 days inside the Shiraz Intelligence Office and Adel Abad Prison, he was released on a $50,000 bail.

Judicial authorities have cracked down on the Gonabadi Dervish order, resulting in hundreds of arrests last year. On 3 May, a trial for 189 Gonabadi Dervishes began at Branch 104 of the Boroujerd General Criminal Court in Lorestan Province. The Dervishes on trial face charges of “acting against national security” and “creating public anxiety through assembly and issuing petitions and statements.”

The trial is expected to last ten days. Several Dervishes under trial at this court have not received summonses yet. According to the lawyers representing the Dervishes, considering the court hours and the number of individuals under trial, it is expected that during each day of the trial, the cases of 18 to 20 individuals are reviewed.

Some of the lawyers representing the 189 Dervishes include Gholamreza Hersini, Ehsanollah Heydari, Saeed Gholamian, and Maryam Moshfegh, along with 17 other lawyers.

Kasra Nouri’s mother told the Campaign that government officials have also harassed her family: “Last week, Kasra’s 16-year old brother Amir Nouri was interrogated for five hours inside Intelligence Office’s Detention Center, known as No. 100. We remain under pressure during our visits and [the authorities] do not treat us properly.”

“The conviction and extremely harsh sentencing of human rights defenders is an indication of mounting repression against the legitimate activities of human rights defenders and represents a serious setback for the protection of human rights in Iran,” the statement quotes Shaheed saying.

Noting the arrests and lengthy prison sentences of distinguished human rights defenders Narges Mohammadi, Abdolfattah Soltani, and Nasrin Sotoudeh, the experts called for the immediate release of all human rights defenders and the need to guarantee their future protection.

The full text of the statement is below:

__________________________________________________________

Independent UN experts urge Iran to ensure protection for rights defenders

4 May 2012 –A group of independent United Nations experts today condemned the ongoing arrests and harsh sentencing of human rights defenders in Iran, and urged the Government to ensure they are provided with adequate protection.
“The conviction and extremely harsh sentencing of human rights defenders is an indication of mounting repression against the legitimate activities of human rights defenders and represents a serious setback for the protection of human rights in Iran,” said the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed.

Independent experts, or special rapporteurs, are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not United Nations staff, nor are they paid for their work. Along with fellow experts, Mr. Shaheed voiced particular concern about the situation of Nargess Mohammadi, whose state of health is reportedly extremely fragile.

Ms. Mohammadi, the former vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, founded by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, was rearrested on 21 April to resume a six-year prison sentence handed down by an Iranian appeal court for ‘assembly and collusion against national security, membership in Defenders of Human Rights Centre, and propaganda against the regime.’

The Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, emphasized that human rights defenders play a fundamental role in ensuring a democratic society which respects human rights.

“They must be allowed to carry out their work without facing intimidation, harassment, arrest, and prosecution,” she said.

The experts also highlighted the plight of other human rights defenders arrested or convicted for carrying out their legitimate work, such as Abdolfattah Soltani and Nasrin Sotoudeh, two lawyers who have represented many high-profile political and human rights activists.

Mr. Soltani was arrested in September 2011 on charges of collusion, propaganda against the system and acquisition of property through illegitimate means. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison and a 20-year ban on practicing law.

Ms. Sotoudeh was arrested in September 2010 and sentenced by an Iranian appeal court to six years’ imprisonment along with a ten-year ban on practising law.

“The Government has an obligation to ensure that lawyers can perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference and that they do not suffer prosecution for any action taken while carrying out their duties,” said the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul.

The experts called for the immediate release of the human rights defenders concerned, along with all those people who have been arrested and detained for peacefully promoting human rights observance in the country.

“The sentencing of Mansoureh Behkish is motivated solely by her legitimate activities as a human rights defender, and is in clear violation of Iran’s international law commitments,” says David Kode, Policy and Advocacy Officer at CIVICUS, in the statement.

The statement, released on 24 April, criticizes the Iranian government’s continuing persecution of the Mourning Mothers group. Mansoureh Behkish is only one of the many supporters of the Mourning Mothers that has faced arrest, unfair trials, and harsh prison sentences.

CIVICUS also calls for an end to the systematic persecution and prosecution of women human rights defenders, an issue that is “continuing unabated in Iran. Additionally, the statement urges Iran to release all prisoners of conscience, and end its systematic repression of the Iranian people’s civil liberties.

The full text of the statement is below:

Press Statement
CIVICUS: Iran must revoke harsh sentences against human rights defenders

24 April 2012, Johannesburg.

Serious violations of the fundamental rights of women human rights defenders are continuing unabated in Iran, says CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

In the latest instance, Mansoureh Behkish was sentenced to four and a half years in jail for her human rights work on 3 April 2012. Mansoureh was sentenced to four years for colluding against the Republic through the Mourning Mothers Group and an additional six months for instigating propaganda against the government.

The Mourning Mothers Group, of which Mansoureh is a member, campaigns against unlawful killings, arrests, torture and enforced disappearances of Iranians. The group is composed of women whose children have been murdered, detained or disappeared in Iran since June 2009, and also includes family members of victims of serious human rights violations perpetuated by the Iranian government.

Mansoureh has long been subjected to arbitrary arrest and interrogation stemming from her campaigning work against violations of the rights of Iranians. She was first arrested in August 2009 and detained and interrogated at the notorious Evin Prison for three days. She was re-arrested on 11 June 2011 and released on 8 July. Her passport was also confiscated and a travel ban imposed to prevent her carrying out legitimate human rights activities. Her trial began on 24 December 2011 and she was notified by the Revolutionary Court in Tehran of her sentencing on 4 April 2012. She is in the process of lodging an appeal against the sentence.

“The Iranian government is waging a systematic campaign to silence civil society and discourage Iranians from engaging on human rights issues,” says David Kode, Policy and Advocacy Officer at CIVICUS. “The sentencing of Mansoureh Behkish is motivated solely by her legitimate activities as a human rights defender, and is in clear violation of Iran’s international law commitments.”

Iran continues to imprison numerous human rights defenders for acts of dissent, making it one of the most difficult places for civil society to operate. Arbitrary arrests and judicial harassment resulting in harsh prison sentences for exercising basic democratic freedoms are rife. A critical mass of human rights defenders has had to flee Iran to avoid persecution.

Recently, supporters of the Mourning Mothers Group Leyla Sefollahi and Jila Karamzadeh-Makvandi were handed two-year jail terms for “acting against national security.” Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotendeh, who is widely known for her work in defending juveniles facing the death penalty and campaigning for prisoners of conscience, is herself serving an 11-year sentence for “threatening the security of the state.”

CIVICUS urges Iran to immediately and unconditionally free all prisoners of conscience, whose continued incarceration is a blight on Iran’s human rights record.

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is a global movement of civil society dedicated to   strengthening citizen action and civil society across the world.
__________________________________________________________________
For more information please contact CIVICUS:
David Kode ( david.kode@civicus.org ), Policy and Advocacy Officer, CIVICUS or
Kiva LaTouche( kiva.latouche@civicus.org) Communications Officer, CIVICUS
Tel: +27 11 833-5959
__________________________________________________________________

CIVICUS House, 24 Gwigwi Mrwebi Street, Newtown, Johannesburg, 2001, South Africa
PO Box 933, Southdale, Johannesburg, 2135, South Africa
tel +27 11 833-5959 | fax +27 11 833-7997 | email info@civicus.org.

Authorities allegedly kept him in solitary confinement the vast majority of his detention, and according to one family friend, beat him. Behnam Irani, a Christian pastor whose prison sentence was extended by five years just before his October 2011 release, is reportedly in dire physical condition. Irani and Fathi have both appealed their sentences.

In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a source close to Farshid Fathi and his family said that all of Fathi’s alleged “crimes” were simply his work as a pastor: “The Bibles we brought to the country were seen as a crime, having more than one Bible or distributing Bibles were seen as a crime, having Christian literature was part of the crime …”

In a forthcoming report to be released summer 2012 about persecuted Christian converts in Iran, the Campaign documents the arrest and persecution of dozens of Christian converts. According to the Campaign’s findings, Christian pastors often face harsher forms of prosecution, such as longer prison sentences, than other persecuted Christians.

Authorities originally arrested Fathi on 26 December 2010 as part of a crackdown on Christians on Christmas Eve. Christian news agencies claim that approximately sixty Christians were arrested during this time.

Fathi’s trial was held in January 2012 and in April 2012, Judge Abdolghassem Salavati, known as the “Judge of Death” for doling out lengthy prison terms and even executions to dozens of political prisoners, sentenced Fathi to six years on the charges of “actions against national security,” “being in contact with enemy foreign countries,” and “religious propaganda.”

The source told the Campaign that Fathi’s charges were based on his contact with Elam ministries, a U.K.-based Persian ministry.

“During the interrogations they had Farshid’s laptop which contained all sorts of church financial information, so for example, money paid for [a church member] to go on a mission was seen as a crime, money used for a proselytizing project was seen as a crime … our travel abroad to conferences was seen as a crime … these are seen as evidence of acting against national security.”

The source also told the Campaign that Fathi’s lawyer was deprived of full access to his client’s case: “When the lawyer went to court they wouldn’t give him the file … Until … a few days [before the trial] they gave him the file, but not even the full file,” said the source, adding that Fathi is currently in Ward 350 in Evin Prison.

Behnam Irani, a Christian pastor and member of the evangelical group Church of Iran, was arrested in April 2010. The Church of Iran is a Christian congregation based in Rasht, whose members have previously also been targeted by the government.

In October 2011, just three days prior to his scheduled release, he was informed that his original 2008 suspended sentence was going to be re-activated and his prison sentence would be extended by five years. Several Christian news agencies have recently alerted to his deteriorating health condition and alleged abuse by prison guards in prison.

The Campaign’s upcoming report on Protestant Christian converts, based on interviews with about 30 Iranian Christians, highlights the broader trend of Christians in Iran who face threats, arrests, and employment discrimination for their beliefs. Nearly everyone interviewed for the Campaign’s forthcoming report was a Christian convert, particularly evangelical Christians.

Amongst Christian converts currently detained in Iran is Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who is awaiting a final verdict on whether or not his death sentence on the charge of “apostasy” will be upheld. According to Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN), authorities have reportedly also imprisoned Noorollah Qabitzade, who was detained in the December 2010 crackdown and remains in prison in Ahvaz.

A member of FCNN explained to the Campaign the political motives behind the persecution and intimidation of Christians:

“We Iranian Christians have never seen ourselves as a political opposition but the government wants to characterize us as political because they want to tie us to groups outside the country and paint us as supporters of foreigners.”