As a young Iranian man entered a pharmacy to purchase his medication, security authorities arrested him allegedly for being in contact with foreign Christians. They immediately transferred him to an unknown location.
According to Iranian Christian News Agency, Mohabat News, as a young man entered a pharmacy in Tehran on Wednesday Augusts 27, 2014, Iranian security authorities arrested him for being in contact with Christians outside the country.
In a report, Human Rights activists inside the country identified the above mentioned individual as Yousef Hassan-zadeh, a resident of Tehran.
After he was arrested, officers transferred him to an unknown location.
A family member of Mr. Hassan-zadeh said, "Yousef has called home twice since his arrest. In one of the phone calls he said authorities had arrested him for being in contact with Christians in Europe." However, in both phone calls he indicated that he was unaware of his location.
The report states, Mr. Hassan-zadeh's wife has stressed that her husband is Muslim and has never converted to another religion. Apparently not only converting to Christianity is an offense under Islamic laws of Iran, but being in contact with Christian converts, even those outside the country, is considered an offense as well.
In another recent incident, on August 12, 2014, two Christian convert men, Mehdi Vaziri, 28 and Amir Kian, 27 were arrested in a house-church gathering in Tehran. Families of the two young men were also unaware of their whereabouts for several days. Latest reports indicate that both men are still being held in prison and face serious charges, including acting against national security and propagating against the Islamic regime.
Looking about two decades back into the history of Islamic Republic of Iran reveals that whenever the security authorities see that the international community is silent about what they do, they intensify their crack-down on religious and ethnic minorities.
After Barack Obama took office as President of the United States, he tried to improve U.S. relations with the Islamic nations. This provided an opportunity for the Iranian government to expand its campaign against religious minorities, especially Christians. A recent UN report indicates that there are currently at least 50 Christian prisoners, mostly Christian converts, in Iran.
Earlier, in his latest report, Ahmad Shaheed, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, stressed that he encountered at least 300 confirmed arrests of Iranian Christians for their faith, in the period of his investigation.