Pastor Faces 20-Year Sentence

On Sept. 18, 2023, Pastor Anooshavan Avedian, who is 61 years old with a wife and two children, was summoned by police to Evin prison to begin a 10-year prison sentence. Pastor Avedian was arrested on Aug. 21, 2020, when approximately 30 security agents raided his home while family and friends gathered to pray and worship. The group met in his home because the government closed their church several years earlier. Government agents confiscated Bibles and mobile phones, taking Pastor Avedian and two Christian converts to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. The converts were released two days later, but Pastor Avedian was held for 26 days and harshly interrogated. Pastor Avedian was tried on April 11, 2022, before an Iranian judge and sentenced to 10 years in prison for engaging in “propaganda contrary to and disturbing to the holy religion of Islam.” Avedian faces an additional 10 years of “deprivation of social rights” upon his release.

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