Iranian-Armenian pastor Joseph Shahbazian remains in detention in Tehran’s Evin Prison nearly a month after his re-arrest and continues to be denied access to a lawyer or to be informed of any official charges against him, Article18 understands.

“When the initial investigation is completed, detainees are often released on bail,” explained Article18’s director, Mansour Borji, “but Joseph continues to be detained almost one month after his re-arrest, not informed of any official charge, and denied access to a lawyer – in violation of Article 35 of the constitution.

“The Iranian New Year is approaching, as well as Joseph’s [61st] birthday, and if he is not released in the next few days, the likelihood is that he will be forced to spend both of those celebrations and the entire [two-week] holiday season in pretrial detention.”

Article18 also understands that several of the dozens of Christians first arrested alongside Joseph in the summer of 2020 have been summoned again for questioning or visited by officers of the Ministry of Intelligence, in an attempt to find evidence of the pastor’s continued involvement in house-churches – the reason for his initial arrest and subsequent 10-year prison sentence.

This is despite the fact that Joseph was eventually “pardoned” for his alleged crime, after an appeal court had reduced his sentence as there was “not enough evidence to determine the maximum punishment specified in Article 498 of the Islamic Penal Code”, which relates to the organisation of groups that “threaten national security”. 

House-churches, which have proliferated across Iran following the forced closure of churches that once offered services in the national language of Persian, are routinely targeted by the Iranian authorities, which have described them as “enemy groups”, even though they are simply places where Christians gather to pray and worship.

As Christian convert Amin Afshar-Naderi testified at the UN in January, he only began attending a house-church, for which he was later sentenced to 15 years in prison, because “the doors of our church in Tehran’s Shahrara neighbourhood had … been closed”.

“When that church was banned from accepting Persian-speaking Christians … the Assyrian pastor of our church was dismissed. Therefore we were left without options for communal worship, [other than] to gather in our homes,” he said.

Joseph, who was released from prison in September 2023, was re-arrested on 6 February, on the same day as fellow Christian and former prisoner of conscience Nasser Navard Gol-Tapeh, who also remains detained and has refused to eat in protest against his re-arrest.