persecution of Christians in Iran, including the murder of a Protestant house church pastor.
"There is consternation," after 50-year old Pastor Ghorban Tori was reportedly stabbed to death November 22, a diplomatic source linked to the Dutch embassy in Tehran told BosNewsLife.
It came as new details emerged Tuesday, December 6, surrounding the circumstances of the murder of Tori, a former Muslim whose bleeding body was dropped in front of his home a few hours after the knife attack, BosNewsLife monitored.
Voice Of the Martyrs (VOM), a US-based religious rights group with close contacts in Iran, said it has learned that the pastor "received a phone call from the head of religious leaders of the Turkmen people," a week before his death in the city of Gonbad-e-Kavus, a town east of the Caspian Sea along the Turkmenistan border.
TURKMEN LEADERS
"This was an invitation to attend a meeting held by the Turkmen religious leaders in order for Ghorban to answer some of their questions."
The pastor was "quite excited about this invitation, as he considered it an opportunity to share with them about Jesus," VOM told BosNewsLife.
But at the end of their meeting, they made clear to the pastor they would give him "one more chance" to deny his Christian faith "and return to Islam," VOM said, citing church sources. The pastor refused and left the room, "very frustrated" only to receive another phone call on November 22, the day he was murdered.
CHRISTIAN FAITH
The caller allegedly wanted to meet him in a park to speak about his Christian faith. After no one turned up, he decided to go back home "and stopped by a toy shop to buy a toy for his four-year-old daughter," VOM said.
"When he got to the end of the alley where his house was at, he realized that a car was stopped there" with three passengers, VOM added. "Later it was discovered that they were from a Turkmen sect called Vahabiyoun, a hard-line Islamic group of whom many people are afraid…One of the three got out of the car and called Ghorban.
When Ghorban got closer…he put a knife into his stomach and his intestines poured out on his hand. The second one attacked him by knife at his back, and the third one put the knife in his throat," the organization explained.
ISLAMIC "PUNISHMENT"
One man was reportedly overheard saying: "This is the punishment of those who become infidels and reject Islam."
After his wife, Afoul Achikeh, came out of the house and saw her husband’s dead body she first cried but later told people to remember him as "a Christian martyr who laid down his life for the sake of Christ," VOM quoted church sources as saying.
Following the killing Iran’s secret police detained family members and other believers of his independent house church in Gonbad-e-Kavus, while raiding houses searching for Bibles and other banned Christian books in the Farsi language, church sources said.
Other church leaders are also reported to have been threatened. Tori is survived by his wife and four children, ages 3 to 23. Ghorban Dordi Tourani, was the first Turkmen Christian in Iran known to have been killed for his faith. Iranian officials have not commented on the case.
IRAN REFUGEES
His murder was expected to add to pressure on refugees from Iran. On Tuesday, December 6, Christian news agency Compass Direct reported however that at least one family, received permission to resettle in the United States after fighting a long deportation battle in Turkey.
Widow Zivar Khademian, together with her daughter Fatemeh Moini, 19, and sons Hossein and Kazem Moini, both in their early 30s, had fled to Turkey in January 2003. After arriving in Turkey, the family was twice refused refugee status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) despite their status as former Muslims who had converted to Christianity.
Under Iran’s strict Islamic laws, anyone who abandons the Muslim can face the death penalty. Human rights watchers fear increased persecution of Christians in new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has reportedly called for a crackdown on “the burgeoning movement of house churches across Iran." (With BosNewsLife Research, BosNewsLife News Center and reports from Iran).
