ICC Note:
“Following a series of orchestrated and coordinated attacks by the secret agents of the ministry of Information in Isfahan that resulted in the arrest of a Christian pastor and several newly converted believers, some of the detainees were temporarily released after more than 2 months of captivity by posting bail and agreeing to strict conditions,” Mohabat News reports.
5/1/2012 Iran (Mohabat News) – Following a series of orchestrated and coordinated attacks by the secret agents of the ministry of Information in Isfahan that resulted in the arrest of a Christian pastor and several newly converted believers, some of the detainees were temporarily released after more than 2 months of captivity by posting bail and agreeing to strict conditions.
According to reports received by the Iranian Christian News, “Mohabat News”, several newly converted Christians that were rounded up and arrested in a series of coordinated home invasions by the secret agents of the government were temporarily released on April 30, 2012, after spending more than 2 months in detention, by posting bail and agreeing to strict release conditions.
The above mention attacks occurred at 7:00 am on February 22, 2012 by plain clothes security officers of the ministry of Information in the city of Isfahan in which Hekmat Salimi, the official pastor of the St. Paul Church of Isfahan, was arrested along with several other newly converted Christians. This attack was just beginning of these coordinated and pre-planned attacks thatresulted in other arrests as well.
Mr. Hekmat Salimi is a Farsi-speaking pastor who was arrested and charged with propagating Christianity among the Farsi-speaking Iranians of Isfahan. He is still being held in Dastgerd prison in uncertainty. It is said that a bail of 50,000,000 Tomans (approximately 40,000 USD) is demanded for his release but judicial authorities have refused to receive the demanded bail as yet. He has been a Christian for more than 30 years and has published several theological books and Christian poems.
Following the arrest of this pastor, the wave of arrests and detention of newly converted Christians in the Isfahan and the surrounding towns began to intensify and reports indicate that all of the subsequent arrest that happened at the homes or the work places of these Christians followed a similar pattern. It seems that these attacks had been a well-planned and coordinated strategy by the secret agents of the Ministry of Information.
Other arrested believers whose names are available at this time are: Majid Enayat, Shahram Ghaedi, Enayat Jafari, Fariborz Parsi-Nejad, Keyhan Amirian, Khodadad Nasiri, Javad…, and Misem Hojatti, and Ms. Shahnaz Zarifi and Ms. Maryam Delaram.
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