sharia court in Tehran after news of his trial was leaked to the international press, BosNewsLife monitored Sunday, May 1. But officials informed the Protestant lay pastor’s lawyer and family that he was "being transferred to his home city of Bandar-i Bushehr" to stand trial there, reported Compass Direct, a Christian news agency.
At least one report on the Pourmand case from BosNewsLife.com was carried by United States funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is broadcasting to the Middle East. No indication was given as to when he would be transferred to one of several prisons in the southern port city and when the trial would begin, Compass Direct reported.
Pourmand, 47, faces the death penalty under the Islamic regime’s laws, on charges of
apostasy and proselytizing. He was arrested by the Iranian security police last September for deserting Islam 25 years ago to become a Christian.
FORMER COLONEL
A former colonel in the Iranian army, he was serving as lay pastor of an Assemblies of
God congregation in Bandar-i Bushehr. After five months in solitary confinement, he was convicted by a military court martial in mid February for "deceiving the Iranian armed forces" about his conversion and sentenced to three years in prison.
Judges at the military tribunal declared the written evidence that his army superiors knew about his Christian faith to be "falsified documents." Iran’s Islamic law statutes forbid a non-Muslim to hold any position of authority over Muslims.
For the past two months, Pourmand has been jailed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison in a group cell with a number of well-known political dissidents, human rights watchers said.
He has lost nearly 40 pounds while undergoing interrogation in the first five months of strict isolation, Compass Direct claimed.
US CONCERNED
Earlier, the US State Department warned that "some prison facilities, including Tehran’s Evin prison, were notorious for the cruel and prolonged acts of torture inflicted upon political opponents of the Government." Additionally, "in recent years, government officials have inflicted severe prisoner abuse and torture in a series of "unofficial" secret prisons and detention centers outside the national prison system," the State Department added in its recent Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
"The prisons in Bandar-i Bushehr [where Pourmand is expected to arrive next] are [also] terrible," one unidentified Iranian source was qouted as saying. “By law, he should be allowed visitors once or twice a week. But in Iran, nobody pays any attention to the law." Torture remains an addittional concern.
The US State Department said that common methods include "prolonged solitary confinement with sensory deprivation, beatings, long confinement in contorted positions, kicking detainees with military boots, hanging detainees by the arms and legs, threats of execution if individuals refused to confess, burning with cigarettes, sleep deprivation, and severe and repeated beatings with cables or other instruments on the back and on the soles of the feet." It added that last year "prisoners also reported beatings about the ears, inducing partial or complete deafness, and punching in the eyes, leading to partial or complete blindness."
FAMILY SUFFERING
Pourmand’s family is also suffering as his officer salary was suspended at the time of his arrest, with his entire pension cancelled after his military court conviction. Although court orders were issued immediately to evict his family from their army housing, local authorities in Bandar-i Bushehr have postponed the eviction of his wife and two teenage sons until the end of the current school term, Compass Direct reported.
“Hamid’s wife and sons feel very alone now,” an Iranian source was qouted as saying. “They are isolated, without any source of income, and no place to go when summer comes.” Reportedly local church leaders are under such government pressure that they do not dare to have any contact with her and the children.
Human rights watchers say that besides Pourmand Iran’s Islamic government has used trumped-up spying charges in 1988 and 1990 as a pretext to jail, try and execute two other former Muslims for alleged "treason." Since then, another four Protestant church leaders from Muslim or Christian backgrounds are known to have been assassinated under "suspicious circumstances,"according to human rights groups.
MANY FLEE
Dozens more have reportedly fled the country to escape legal prosecution for apostasy or proselytizing. Evangelical Christians have been arrested this past year in ongoing police crackdowns in major cities, as well as in the provinces of northern Iran, human rights watchters and church sources say.
Although most of these believers were apparently released after several weeks of what church officials describe as "harsh mistreatment and interrogation," they apparently remain under threat and police surveillance.
The Iranian government strictly forbids evangelical Christian activities and has closed down churches, banning Farsi editions of the Bible and arresting citizens caught worshipping in house-church fellowships.
Analysts have linked the apparent church crackdown to fears within the government in Tehran to lose control over a growing movement of people fighting for more religious and political freedom in the strict Islamic nation. (With: BosNewsLife Research, Compass Direct, Stefan J. Bos and reports from Iran and the United States)
