This is the true story of a US missionary who travelled to Iran on a two-week tourist visa but ended up being detained for a further nine weeks in the country’s notorious Evin Prison, where he was threatened with the death sentence.

Dan Baumann travelled to Iran in December 1996 with a South African friend, with the simple aim of, as Dan puts it, “sharing the love of Jesus”.

But after a “wonderful” two weeks, in which he says he “fell in love with Iran”, Dan and his friend, Stuart Timm, were stopped as they attempted to cross back into Turkmenistan, and told there was a “problem” with their passports.

Dan and Stuart were then given an address in Tehran, and told they must go there in a few days to get their passports back.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be able to walk in, in a couple days, pick up your passports, do whatever they need you to do, and then you can finally be on your way,” they were told.

But when the two men eventually arrived at the address they had been given, three days after they had been stopped at the border, it soon became clear that they were not in fact going to be allowed to leave.

“At first, they were very kind,” Dan recalls. “They met us at the door, they spoke fluent English. Then, after a while, they said: ‘But we want to talk to you privately.’ And that’s when they took my friend to one room, and they took me to another room, and that’s when they began to beat me, for about six hours.

“They hit me in the face, they spat on me, they kicked me. They never explained why, but they were yelling and screaming this whole time.”

Stuart was also beaten and their glasses were taken away from them – “without any explanation … and they were never given back” – before the two men were blindfolded and “pushed into the back of a van”.

After driving for around 20-30 minutes, they were taken into another building, blindfolded, and beaten again. 

“They finally stopped, took the blindfolds off, and that’s when they made us take all our clothes off … They gave us prison clothes, and that was the first idea we had that maybe we would be imprisoned,” Dan says.

And imprisoned they were, in Dan’s case for nine weeks, before both men were released following diplomatic efforts by the South African and Swiss governments, respectively – Dan having travelled on his Swiss passport.

Dan’s description of his Evin Prison cell is similar to the testimonies of many Iranian Christians who have also been detained there: 

A “very small” cell of about 5×6 metres, with a toilet on one side and a sink, “and on the other side was my blanket. There was no mattress. I just slept on a blanket on the floor.

“The room didn’t have, like a prison in America would, bars in the door. Instead, it was just a steel door with a little peek-hole. And … the light was on 24 hours a day.”

Dan describes going for “walks” in his cell, taking three or four steps in one direction, before turning around. He also collected the sugar cubes he was given whenever they brought him tea, and built structures out of them to pass the time.

Dan says he was “beaten every day” and threatened with death for two reasons: “one for being a Christian worker, and one for being a ‘spy’ for America, and it began to hit me that I actually might be there for a long time, that I might actually be there for the rest of my life”. 

After around two weeks, Dan says he became so depressed that he even contemplated suicide.

Until finally, one day, the guards came to his room and told him: “Gather your things. You’re moving.”

“Instead of going to another cell, they marched me to this room. They said, ‘Get dressed.’ And I opened this door, and sure enough, it was my clothes from my bag. No extra prison clothes.

“I’m like: ‘What? Why are they making me get dressed in my old clothes?’ … And my only thought was, is that maybe it would be my last day in that prison. I knew people were executed in there, and maybe this would be that day for me.”

But then, having been taken to the courthouse for the second time, instead of being taken into a courtroom, Dan was taken to an office, where the head of the judiciary announced to him: “Today, when working with the Swiss Embassy, we choose to release Dan Baumann, and he’s a free man.”

The next person to walk in was the Swiss ambassador, who told Dan: “you’re coming with me”. 

“I’m like, ‘Yes sir!’” Dan says. “And I got in his car and I locked those doors … We drove off to his house. He began to explain the situation: that the president of [Iran] had made an executive order to let me go. He’d actually overruled the Parliament … and so that me getting out of the country was very, very imperative, very, very needed, in case things would shift back to the way that things were. 

“So they got me this random airline figure the next night, a commercial airline to Germany with a connecting flight down to Switzerland.” 

Dan says he’ll “never forget” his time at the ambassador’s residence, his first taste of freedom after more than two months’ detention:

“I was free, free to use the bed and free to take a shower without anyone banging on the door. I’ll never forget the first meal was this wonderful, very nice European lunch, starting with French onion soup, with so many spoons and forks and bowls and plates on the table. 

“And I remember … all of a sudden, I looked at the ambassador and said, ‘You know, there’s three spoons here on the table, and this soup, I don’t know what’s the right one to use with the soup.’ And he looks at me with a smile and says, ‘Sir, you’re a free man. You can use whichever one you like!’”

He also describes still feeling anxious as it “finally came time for the flight” and the end of his ordeal.

“I get to the airport,” he remembers. “I go through security. I’m waiting for this flight to Germany. I finally get on the plane. As I finally get on the plane, all of a sudden, I’m hit by all this emotion, like: ‘This could be real! Like, I really could get out of Iran!’ 

“So I’m sitting on my chair going, ‘God, please tell the pilot to go!’ And, I’ll never forget, we finally taxi, we finally take off.” 

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The quotes in this feature are taken from Dan’s interview with Delafé Testimonies in December 2024, which you can watch in full here.