by Steve Dew-Jones | 25 Sep 2024 | News
A 62-year-old Iranian-Armenian pastor serving a 10-year prison sentence for leading a house-church has been acquitted and released after just over a year in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Anooshavan Avedian was released last night, after his appeal was accepted at a hearing...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 16 Sep 2024 | News
A Christian convert arrested a week ago in the southern city of Shiraz is still being held in an infamous detention centre belonging to the Ministry of Intelligence. Mojdeh Falahi, 36, whose two older sisters were arrested five years ago for their Christian...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 6 Sep 2024 | Features
A British-Iranian who spent over four years in Tehran’s Evin Prison says claims by Islamic Republic officials that “no-one is imprisoned in Iran because of their beliefs” are “among the 1000s of lies they have said”. “This can be considered one of those many...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 2 Sep 2024 | Reports
The Iranian authorities’ “systematic” and “targeted” dissemination of disinformation about religious minorities, including Christians, has been highlighted in a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The report, ‘Misinformation and...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 2 Sep 2024 | News
Embed from Getty Images The Iranian authorities’ “systematic” and “targeted” dissemination of disinformation about religious minorities, including Christians, has been highlighted in a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 29 Aug 2024 | News
The case files of over 300 Christians who faced charges related to their faith and religious activities are among the over 3 million prosecutions leaked by hackers of the Tehran judiciary’s website over the past six months, a study by Article18 has revealed. The data,...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 29 Aug 2024 | Features
Of all the examples in the leaked Edaalate Ali files pertaining to Christians, one case stands out: that of a dual national by the name of Alexander B, who at nearly 80 years old was sentenced to five years in prison for attending a house-church. The court documents...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 28 Aug 2024 | News
One of the eight Christian converts recently sentenced to a combined 45 years in prison for their involvement in house-churches has died in a road traffic accident. Bijan Gholizadeh, who was a father to three daughters, was killed on Saturday, 24 August, while driving...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 7 Aug 2024 | Features
Maryam Jalili was 40 years old when she became a Christian, and by then had already been through so much. At the age of just 17, Maryam’s firstborn son, who had been born in the year of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, died after contracting meningitis. Then, while...
by Steve Dew-Jones | 7 Aug 2024 | Witness Statements
For a summary of Maryam’s story, you can read our feature article here. Background 1. My name is Maryam and I was born in 1964 in Neyshabur [northeast Iran]. I had four sisters and two brothers. My father was a military man, and as a result he was extremely strict in...
