Hamid Pourmand to jail for three years and ordered his "immediate transfer to a group prison cell in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison," news reports said late Thursday, February 17.
Well informed Christian news agency Compass Direct, which has close ties with persecuted
believers in the region, said 47-year old Pourmand, a former army colonel, was found guilty
"of deceiving the armed forces" by not declaring he was a convert from Islam to Christianity.
It is illegal for a non-Muslim to serve as a military officer in the Islamic Republic of Iran. However Pourmand, a Christian for nearly 25 years, said he produced several original documents in which his military superiors had acknowledged years ago that he was a Christian.
"But the court didn’t accept them," Compass Direct quoted an unidentified Iranian source as saying. "They said these were false documents."
The verdict represented the maximum penalty for Pourmand’s alleged offense, and the lay pastor of the Assemblies of God faces automatic discharge from the army and forfeits his entire income, pension and housing for his family, Compass Direct reported. Married with two children, Pourmand was living in Bandar-i Bushehr, a southern port city where he served as volunteer lay pastor of a small Assemblies of God congregation.
EU CONCERNED
There were no immediate reactions from Western diplomats, however the European Union had expressed concern about his treatment.
Before the trial began this year, the EU lodged a formal protest with Iranian authorities over the arrest and alleged harassment of Pourmand and other members of religious minorities, as well as detained journalists, and staff of non-government organizations, BosNewsLife monitored.
The Union protested the arrests of Christians and in particular Christian pastors like Pourmand as an "infringement of the freedom of religion or belief". It urged the immediate release of Pastor Pourmand, who was only recently moved to a military prison.
OTHER PASTOR KILLED
Human rights groups have expressed concern about the treatment Pourmand may receive while in prison. In July 1994, Mehdi Dibaj, another minister of the Assemblies of God Church, was killed after spending nine years in prison for refusing to abjure his Christian faith and return to Islam, said the well informed Catholic AsiaNews Internet website recently. Several other Christian leaders are also known to have died.
Pourmand was arrested with over 80 other Christian leaders on September 9 in Karaj, a town 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) west of Tehran during a police raid against the annual General Council of his denomination. All but Pourmand have since been released, church sources and human rights watchers said.
It has not been clarified whether his jail term begins from Wednesday’s verdict, or dates from his original arrest last September 9, Compass Direct noted.
SPYING CHARGES
During the hearing, prosecutors questioned Pourmand closely on accusations that he had been involved in spying against his country. "They have nothing at all to prove this," one acquaintance of the lay pastor reportedly said. "He denied it, because he really had no contact with foreigners at all, he is not that kind of person," the acquaintance reportedly said, apparently speaking on condition of anonymity because of security fears.
A lawyer acting on behalf of Pourmand’s family has reportedly said he will appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court. Simultaneously, he hopes to block efforts to put Pourmand on trial before a sharia court of Islamic law, where under charges of apostasy and proselytizing he could be sentenced to death.
Human rights groups claim the detention comes as Islamic hardliners are apparently concerned about the growing interest in Christianity across the nation. There are an estimated 360,000 Christians in Iran out of a population of roughly 65 million, but that number is believed to grow.
Even Shiite cleric Hasan Mohammadi from the Ministry of Education said in a speech to Tehran high school students recently that "on average every day, 50 young Iranians convert secretly to Christian denominations," reported AsiaNews recently.
(With: Compass Direct, BosNewsLife News Center, Stefan J. Bos, and additional reports).
