UPDATE 3 OCTOBER 2024: Mojdeh Falahi, who has been held without charge and without access to a lawyer since 9 September, wept inconsolably during the five minutes her mother was allowed to visit her on 30 September. It was her mother’s second visit. Mojdeh’s brother-in-law Sam Khosravi told Morning Star News, “Psychologically, she is in a very bad condition and only cries.” Family members are worried about mistreatment and the conditions of her confinement, and believe intelligence agents are interrogating her for information about other Christians. They are confused about her ongoing detention because she is not a church leader and therefore is less likely to have information about other Christians.

Speaking on 30 September, Sam said, “Mojdeh’s mother goes to the court every day to pursue the case and asks the judge to release her. She went to the court today, and after a lot of begging, the judge allowed her to see Mojdeh.” Before then the family went to the prosecutor’s office several times to request a visit but were only allowed to talk with Mojdeh briefly by phone and to see her in person once for three minutes. Sam said officials offered them more visiting time if they would encourage her to give them more information, but the family refused. He said she is unable to speak openly during their visits and added, “We do not know what exactly has happened to her because she was being monitored. We worry and wonder why they have kept her for such a long time.”

Christian convert Mojdeh Falahi (36) was arrested on 9 September in the city of Shiraz in southwest Iran and is being held in a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre.

Mojdeh, who is a hairdresser, had gone to the prosecutor’s office in Shiraz at around lunchtime at the request of a Christian friend who had been arrested the day before, to provide documents required for his release. When Mojdeh arrived she was immediately detained and is being held in a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre known as “Pelak-e 100” on charges filed under the titles of “Christianity” and “illegal Christian activities”. She has not been heard from since and has not been granted access to a lawyer. Her family has visited the prosecutor’s office several times and asked to see her but has not been permitted to.

“Mojdeh has been a Christian for years,” a source told Article 18, “though her activities have never been extensive.”

On Tuesday 17 September a family member appealed for prayer, saying: “I am begging for prayer. Please pray for Mojdeh… She has been arrested by the Intelligence Services since Monday and we have no information about her.”

Mojdeh’s older sisters Maryam and Marjan Falahi were part of a group of eight Christian converts arrested in July 2019 in Bushehr in southwest Iran, 300 km west of Shiraz. The sisters were fined and Maryam, who is a nurse, was banned for life from working for any national institution, including the hospital she had worked at for twenty years.

Maryam is married to Sam Khosravi and Marjan is married to Sam’s brother Sasan. Maryam and Sam are adoptive parents to a little girl called Lydia, who will be six in October, and have had to fight to retain custody since July 2020, when a court in their home city of Bushehr ruled that she be removed from their care because as Christians they are “unfit” to be her parents – Lydia, being of unknown parentage, was considered to be Muslim.

Following Mojdeh’s arrest, Article 18’s director Mansour Borji commented, “Mojdeh’s mother, now in her 60s, was left deeply traumatised after enduring the arrest five years ago of two of her daughters for their Christian faith. She has never fully recovered from the pain and anguish of their detention, and now she is being forced to relive that nightmare after the arrest of her third daughter. What the Iranian authorities fail to recognise is that every arrest they make shatters not just one life, but entire families. Each act of cruelty ripples through generations, leaving scars that may never heal, simply because of these people’s commitment to their Christian faith.”

(Article 18, Morning Star News)

Photo: Article 18