Iranian-American pastor imprisoned in Evin, Iran, without notice of charges

HRANA News Agency – Saeed Abedini, a 32-year-old Iranian who is a U.S. citizen and a Christian convert has been imprisoned without notice of any formal charges while visiting his family in Iran.

According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), The Rev. Saeed Abedini, is currently awaiting trial at Iran's notoriously brutal Evin Prison, where he has been incarcerated since late September.

He lives in the U.S. with his wife and two young children, was making one of his frequent visits to see his parents and the rest of his family in Iran, his country of origin and where he spent many years as a Christian leader and community organizer developing Iran's underground home church communities for Christian converts.

On this last trip, the Iranian government pulled him off a bus and said he must face a penalty for his previous work as a Christian leader in Iran.

In July, Abedini left his wife and kids to go to Iran to visit family and continue a humanitarian effort he began years ago to build an orphanage.

After a short visit to a nearby country, Abedini was traveling back into Iran to catch his flight back to the U.S. when members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stopped his bus near the Turkey-Iran border and pulled Abedini from the bus, confiscating his passports and subjecting him to intense interrogation, according to his wife.

After weeks under house arrest and many calls to Iran's passport control office about the status of his confiscated passport, Abedini was told that his case has been referred to the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian government's elite military force.

On Sept. 26, five men kicked open the door of Abedini's parents' residence in Tehran where they collected all communications devices and arrested him.


During the many rounds of interrogations, Abedini has informally been told he will be charged for threatening the national security of Iran and espionage, due to his involvement with Christian house churches and foreign Christian satellite TV ministries.

The Iranian government offered bail in the amount of 500 million toman, or roughly $410,000. Abedini's family has prepared the bail documents many times already but have not been successful in having it accepted or approved, they say.

When they prepared yet again the bail documents but were told they were not going to be accepted
.