Iran: Youcef Nadarkhani - Death Sentence for Pastor

About the Person

Youcef Nadarkhani was born in 1977. He lives in Rasht, the capital of the Iranian republic of Gilan in northern Iran on the Caspian Sea. He is married to Fatemah Pasindedih; they have two children, Daniel (*2003) and Yoel (*2005). At the age of 19, Nadarkhani converted to Christianity. As early as 2001, he served as the Pastor in a network of house-churches including the independent church "Church of Iran," one of the largest house-churches in Iran. Moreover, until his imprisonment, he was the Community Leader of a 400-member community.

Imprisonment and "Trial"

As early as December 2006, Nadarkhani was imprisoned. The charges were: apostasy (defection from Islamic beliefs; according to Islamic law in Iran, punishable with the death penalty) and evangelisation, or spreading non-Islamic teachings. After two weeks, however, he was released without sentencing. In the year 2009, the Iranian Parliament passed a law providing for even stronger promotion and development of the Muslim faith in school lessons. This law pertained to all schoolchildren, including those of Christian parents. Because Nadarkhani’s sons in the local schools were affected by these lessons, Nadarkhani employed his right to religious freedom - which is guaranteed in the Iranian Constitution - and protested against this decision, thereby questioning the state monopoly on childhood education. A Secret Police summons before the Political Tribunal in Rasht on October 12, 2009 was the result. There, he was imprisoned. Initially, they threw the charge of "protest" against him, which was later upgraded to apostasy and evangelisation. Since then, he has sat in the prison of the Secret Police in Lakan, which lies 11 km south of his hometown of Rasht.

Nadarkhani was forced to spend the first month in jail, as well as several months at the time of the "trial", in solitary confinement. A number of measures were taken to return him to the "correct" faith. Among others, he was forced to take pills and was branded as crazy so that he would be declared ill and therefore unfit to plea. In early July 2011, during a wave of sentencing and intimidation, Nadarkhani’s prominent lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadhkani was also sentenced to flogging, nine years in prison, a ten-year professional ban as a lecturer and lawyer, and a financial penalty.

Pressure on the Family

Initially, Youcef Nadarkhani was allowed to regularly receive visits from his lawyer, his family and his friends. His lawyer’s visits were later allowed only on a limited basis. In order to further pressure Nadarkhani, his wife Fatemah Pasindedih was imprisoned on June 18, 2010. She was likewise brought to the prison in Lakan. The couple’s two children were staying with relatives. The Iranian authorities are threatening to remove their parental authority and to send their children to a Muslim family. Because each pressure attempt has proven unsuccessful, his wife Pasindedih was sentenced to life imprisonment without legal counsel before the court. After the sentencing, she appointed a lawyer for an appeal. The verdict of the appeals proceedings was decided on October 11, 2010: Ms. Pasindedih was released after four months in prison. Despite many different attempts to persuade him to renounce Christianity, he resisted and remained true to his faith.

The Death Sentence

On September 21 and 22, 2010, the court proceedings against Youcef Nadarkhani took place. On September 22, on the basis of the charges levied in 2006, the court issued the death sentence for Youcef Nadarkhani. At the time, he did not receive a written decision. Now, he has been moved to the section for political prisoners within the prison and is denied visits from both his family and his lawyer. On November 13, 2010, he finally received the written judgment from the First Court of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was sentenced to execution by hanging because of apostasy and evangelisation. Iranian law grants a 20-day appeals period, in which Nadarkahni’s lawyer presented his case before Iran’s highest court of appeals. Nevertheless, that was unsuccessful. On June 28, 2011, the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court in Qom confirmed the death penalty. Rumours about internal inconsistencies regarding the judges adjudication cannot be confirmed. The sole way to override this ruling would be the renunciation of his religious beliefs. Should the death sentence be carried out, Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani will become the first Iranian citizen to be executed solely and officially because of his religion since many years.

Developments since the beginning of October 2011

The IGFM points out that the Iranian judiciary as well as the Iranian media reacts more and more on international attention. At the beginning of October 2011, the highest court forwarded the case for revision to Ayatollah Ali Chamenei, the highest authority and leader of Iran. Iranian leaders were criticised by numerous international top-ranking politicians because of the death sentence against Nadarkhani, thousands of people took part in appeals and protests. As a result, the trial was returned to the first instance on October 12 by the highest court because of "incomplete investigations".

At the same time, the reports of the Iranian media against Pastor Nadarkhani and western countries got more and more aggressive. In the articles published in Farsi, they said that Nadarkhani was "head of a house of shame". Moreover, they said that he is a "Zionist and an invader". On the homepage of the state-run broadcaster PressTV, these terms were translated with "brothel" and "rapist". Since the beginning of October 2011, the new reproaches got more and more diverse: The Pastor is supposed to be a "Burglar", a "blackmailer", his criminal record is quite long, and he is not at all a real Pastor and leads a campaign against Iran. Furthermore, these articles state that the western countries limit religious freedom, that people are suppressed in these states and that there aren’t any traces of justice in these countries.

Absurdity of the new reproaches:

In all the investigations conducted until today, and also in the written death sentence, Pastor Nadarkhani was only accused of having worked as a pastor and of defection from Islamic belief. The IGFM thinks, that the new accusations are a pure fabrication of the Iranian Regime and fit to their strategy which seeks to criminalize minority groups and politically persecuted persons. Perhaps, international attention has played an important role in the fact that the highest court refuses to provide Nadarkhanis lawyer with its written decision.