Sixty-four-year-old Jamshid Derakhshan has been released on bail after two weeks in solitary confinement in Karaj’s Rajaei-Shahr Prison.

Jamshid was interrogated multiple times during his incarceration and told he had been arrested for “spreading evangelical and Zionist Christianity”. “Zionist Christianity” is a term used by the Iranian regime to describe evangelical Christianity as a whole.

He was also accused of links with Israel and of playing a role in the “rapid expansion of Christianity in Iran”.

Since his conversion to Christianity 30 years ago, Jamshid, whose bail was set at 40 million tomans (around $8,500), has been summoned to court three times and fired from his job as an aviation officer.

He was arrested on 30 November at a “house church” gathering in Hashtgerd, but his family received no news of his arrest until he called them from the prison two weeks later, on 12 December, to tell them he was soon to be released on bail.