On 14 December Christian convert Matthias Haghnejad (51) was released from prison, where he was serving a six-year sentence for “propagating Christianity”. The pastor has a history of arrest dating back to 2006 and has served time in several prisons because of his house-church activities in the Church of Iran.

The pastor’s six-year sentence was handed down in 2012 and he was acquitted on appeal in 2014 but was sent back to prison in January 2022 when his acquittal was overruled. Just two weeks previously he had been released on bail after serving nearly three years of a separate five-year sentence for “acting against national security” through his house-church activities. (He was acquitted of this charge  in February 2022 but remained in prison serving his reinstated six-year sentence.)

Matthias lives in Bandar Anzali in northern Iran’s Gilan province but in summer 2023 he was transferred to Minab prison in the far south of the country, 1,600 km from his wife Anahita Khademi and teenage daughter Hannah. In January he was told that he would be permitted to visit his family monthly for the remainder of his sentence, but during a home visit in April he was ordered to return to prison and told that his so-called “open sentence” would no longer apply.

Another court case still hangs over Matthias, dating back to his arrest with several other church members following a raid on a Christmas gathering in December 2022, while he was on a short furlough from prison.

Read Matthias Haghnejad’s Prisoner Profile.

(Article 18)