family Wednesday October 4, ending more than a week of uncertainty over her whereabouts, an official told BosNewsLife.
"We have received news that Fereshteh Dibaj was today [Wednesday] allowed to call her family. She informed them that she is well and that her husband Amir Montazemi is also well,” said Ann Buwalda, Director of religious rights group Jubilee Campaign USA which has closely followed the case. ‘Amir’ is also known as Reza Montazami.
"It was the first contact from Fereshteh since she and her husband were arrested on Tuesday September 26th,"Buwalda added. “He had been allowed to make a brief call home on Friday September 29, but there had been no word from Fereshteh and there was increasing concern for her well-being."
He said that thousands of Christians around the world “have been praying” for the couple and their six-year old daughter Christine,” who stayed behind with family members.
SECRET POLICE
The couple was detained by Iran’s feared secret police apparently because of their church activities. Computers, personal items and Christian literature in their house were also reportedly confiscated.
Fereshteh is the youngest daughter of the Rev. Mehdi Dibaj, an Assemblies of God minister who was killed for his faith 12 years ago. Dibaj spent over nine years in prison, where he was given the death penalty for committing apostasy.
A few months after international protests prompted his release, he was abducted and assassinated on the way to his teenage daughter Fereshteh’s birthday party, Christians said.
CONTINUING WORK
Fereshteh Dibaj, 28, continued her father’s work and together with her husband, Reza Montazami, 35, lead an independent house church in Mashhad, the only known remnant of two active Protestant Christian congregations worshipping in the city before Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1976.
Both churches were closed by government order in the 1980s. In December 1990, the government executed a Mashhad pastor, the Rev. Hussein Soodmand. A former Muslim who had become a Christian 24 years earlier, Soodmand refused to recant his faith after four months under what human rights watchers describe as "xtreme physical and psychological mistreatment in prison."
Since then other converts to Christianity in Mashhad who continued to worship in their homes have been arrested, threatened, booked on apostasy charges and even evicted from their homes by local authorities. Several of these Christian families have reportedly fled the country to be granted asylum abroad. (With reports from Iran, BosNewsLife Research, and BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos).
