June 20-2014
Iranian authorities are threatening to extend the prison sentence of her husband, Pastor Saeed Abedini, because he leads fellow prisoners in Christian prayers and converts them to Christianity, Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, told the Baptist Press last week.
“I don’t see him [doing this] as an act of defiance,” Naghmeh Abedini said. “Knowing Saeed’s heart as a pastor, he’s seeing people in such a dark place,… on death row for murders and rapes, and just seeing people who are in prison whose future is so dark. Knowing Saeed’s heart, I know that his heart was to give them the hope that he’s found in Christ that no one can take away, even in prison.”
Saeed Abedini was sentenced last year to eight years in prison for his involvement in Iran’s house church movement. Abedini was a leader of house churches before moving to America in 2005 and becoming a US citizen.
He was arrested almost two years ago while on a trip to build an orphanage in Rasht. Though the Iranian constitution officially recognizes Christianity as a minority religion, Christian converts from Islam have been under pressure from the regime.
Naghmeh Abedini and the couple’s two young children live in Idaho. They have not been allowed to speak with Saeed since he was arrested but have communicated through his family in Iran, who are permitted to visit him in prison for 20 minutes weekly.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) reported May 20 that Saeed had been returned to prison after spending two months in a hospital to receive treatment for injuries inflicted by prison officials. He was severely beaten at the hospital before being returned to prison, ACLJ reported.
Naghmeh told Baptist Press that prison wardens have told her husband they can and will increase his jail sentence unless he stops preaching Christianity to fellow prisoners. She said some Muslim prisoners who converted under Abedini’s tutelage have already received extended sentences.
Saeed told relatives he feels compelled to keep preaching.
“Because I want to serve God, I see all of these difficulties as golden opportunities and great doors to serve,” he wrote in a letter from prison last year. “There are empty containers who are thirsty for a taste of the Living Water and we can quench their thirst by giving them Jesus Christ.”
Shortly after Abedini was sentenced, his wife began receiving calls from women in Iran who said their husbands shared a cell with Saeed and had become strangely calm, happy and joyful. Their husbands told the women it wasn’t safe to explain the reason for their transformation during family visits at the prison, but they recommended that their wives call Naghmeh.
“Early on in his imprisonment I got to talk to some of these wives and lead them to Christ because of the change they’ve seen in their husbands,” Naghmeh said. “And I told them, ‘I think Saeed has given your husband all he has, and all he has is the hope he has found in Jesus Christ.’”
Naghmeh revealed that she has been told her husband’s legal options in Iran have been exhausted and there will not be any more opportunities to appeal his conviction.
Naghmeh asked U.S. Christians to send their senators and congressmen brief messages requesting help for her husband and other persecuted Christians around the world. Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas are among those who have told Naghmeh that such emails spur elected officials to action.
Naghmeh has testified before Congress on her husband’s behalf, spoken at the United Nations and asked European nations to press for his release as a condition of trade agreements with Iran. She believes countries like Germany, with whom Iran wants to trade, stand the best chance of securing her husband’s release.
“Money talks more than religion” with Iran, Naghmeh said. “Iran is at a very desperate point. They’re not doing very well economically…. This is the best time to discuss human rights issues in Saeed’s case and Christian persecution with them because they want to try to work with the West.”
