ICC Note:
Pastor Mehdi “Petros” Foroutan was released from prison in Iran on June 12, BosNewsLife reports. While this is positive news, there are still many more Christians imprisoned in Iran.
6/12/2012 Iran (BosNewsLife) – Iran has released Pastor Mehdi “Petros” Foroutan who served about one year in prison following a police crackdown on his and other house churches, a spokesman told BosNewsLife late Tuesday, June 12.
Jason DeMars, who helped the 27-year-old pastor with advocacy, explained that Forouton was released Sunday, June 10.
He added that the pastor “In total served about one year in prison for ‘crimes against national security’ because of his Christian faith.”
Additional death-sentence-carrying charges of “blasphemy”, the word used for “abandoning Islam”, were dropped, Christians said earlier.
The pastor, who is single and has no children, was initially detained in early 2010 “but released on bail” a month later in February, DeMars said.
In December of that year he was again taken into custody amid a massive police action against house churches, that also included the confiscation of his Christian literature from his, according to Christians.
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