Saheb (Zaman) Fadaee | Iran

Source: Prisoner Alert

Yousef Nadarkhani and three of his church members, Saheb (Zaman) Fadaee, Mohammad Ali (Yasser) Mosayebzadeh and Mohammad Reza Omidi, are serving 10-year prison sentences on charges of “acting against national security” and “promoting Zionist Christianity”. The men are all members of the Church of Iran. Yousef 45, had spent nearly three years in prison after being sentenced to death for apostasy in 2010. He was acquitted in September 2012.

The believers, along with Yousef’s wife, Fatemeh Pasandideh, were arrested on Friday, 13 2016. Yousef and Fatemeh were released on bail the same day, while Saheb, Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Reza were released on bail two weeks later.

The four men were sentenced in July 2017 and began their sentences a year later in July 2018, after violent arrests at their homes. Fatemeh was reportedly told she would be arrested if she left Gilan Province. Saheb, Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Reza were also sentenced to 80 lashes each for drinking wine during Communion.

Yousef became a Christian at age 19. His wife is also a Christian convert from Islam, and the couple have been fighting for more than 10 years for the rights of their two boys to be recognized as Christians. For the past several years, the boys have been denied certificates showing they completed their studies, because they refused to take Islamic classes.

Timeline

13 May 2016 Saheb was arrested with several other converts during a series of raids by Ministry of Intelligence agents on ten Christian homes in Rasht. The agents raided a communion service in Yasser Mossayebzadeh’s home, where they confiscated Bibles, computers and mobile phones and took Yasser, Youcef and Youcef’s wife Fatemeh Pasandideh into custody. They also raided the homes of Saheb and Mohammadreza and confiscated their Bibles, computers and mobiles phones. Youcef and Fatemeh were released later that day, but the agents later phoned Saheb and Mohammadreza, summoned them to their office and arrested them there.

28 May 2016 Saheb was released on a bond equivalent to €29,000. (Yasser was released on 29 May and Mohammadreza on 7 June, on the same bonds.)

10 September 2016 Saheb, Yasser and Mohammadreza were sentenced to eighty lashes each for the consumption of alcohol (communion wine) at the time of the raid.

25 May 2017 Saheb was arrested again, at a house church in Rasht, along with the host, Fatemeh Bakhteri.

14 June 2017 Saheb, Youcef, Yasser and Mohammadreza were summoned to the 26th branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran and found guilty of “acting against national security” including “propagating house churches” and “promoting Zionist Christianity”. Judge Ahmadzadeh sentenced them to ten years each in prison. The verdict was dated 24 June but was only received by their lawyer on 6 July. The judge ordered that Youcef and Mohammadreza serve an additional two years each in internal exile in southern Iran. They all appealed.

13 December 2017 Saheb, Youcef, Yasser and Mohammadreza attended an appeal hearing at the Revolutionary Court in Tehran before Judge Hassan Babaee and Judge Ahmad Zargar, both alleged to have prominent roles in Iran’s crackdown on freedom of expression. The appeal failed.

2 May 2018 The four defendants’ lawyer received a court order upholding their ten-year prison sentences. The Christians waited to receive the customary summons to prison.

24 July 2018 Saheb was arrested at his home. Police knocked on the front door at around 7pm, stating falsely that they had a summons for him, and arrested him as soon he opened the door, giving him no time to say goodbye to his wife. He was held briefly in Lakan prison before being transferred to Evin prison in Tehran.

22 September 2018 The lawyer representing Saheb and Fatemeh Bakhteri was informed of the decision reached at a court hearing earlier in the month that they had been sentenced to 18 months and twelve months in prison respectively for “spreading propaganda against the regime”. The verdict states that believing in the Bible’s authority and Jesus as Lord are attacks against Islam. Saheb will not have to serve this latest prison sentence as he is already serving his separate, ten-year sentence. In addition, he was sentenced to two years’ internal exile in Nehbandan County, South Khorasan Province, close to the border with Afghanistan.

15 January 2019 At an appeal hearing in Tehran, judges Hassan Babaee and Ahmad Zargar asked Saheb and Fatemeh to renounce their faith. When they refused, the judges told them to expect a verdict within a few days.

18 May 2019 Saheb and Fatemeh were notified that their prison sentences of 18 and 12 months respectively for “spreading propaganda against the regime” had been upheld by the appeal court.

2 December 2019 Saheb had been suffering from a severe fever for over a week, causing hallucinations. After the first three days he went to the prison doctor’s office, where he was prescribed two tablets and an injection and sent back to his cell. His symptoms remained and three days later Saheb returned to the doctor, but was sent back to his cell without treatment. Other prisoners sought to obtain medication for him without success.

22 June 2020 Saheb was informed that his sentence had been reduced to six years in prison, following a retrial in May.

2 November 2020 Article 18 reported that Saheb had returned to prison after five days’ furlough. It was his first furlough since being imprisoned, despite appealing for compassionate leave at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

15 November 2020 Saheb was given eighty lashes for drinking Communion wine.