Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced a pregnant Christian woman to 16 years in prison on Saturday (March 8) and also handed harsh punishments to two other converts from Islam, a rights group reported.
Revolutionary Court Judge Iman Afshari sentenced Narges Nasri, a 37-year-old Christian pregnant with her first child, on International Women’s Day, according to Article 18. Besides a five-year prison term for membership in a house church (“opposition group”), Nasri was sentenced to 10 years for “propaganda activities contrary to Islamic law.”
The second charge, Article 18’s Steve Dew-Jones told Christian Daily International, is “likely a reference to the terminology in the amended Article 500, which provides for a harsher sentence when evidence is found (or claimed) for funding or organizational involvement from abroad.”
Article 500 has long been used to prosecute Christian converts, but the amendments loosened terms under which charges can be brought and increased maximum punishment from one to five years, or even 10 years if defendants receive “financial or organizational help from abroad,” he said.
Nasri was also sentenced to one year in prison for “propaganda against the state” for having posted on social media in support of the Women, Life, Freedom movement, according to Article 18.
The court sentenced Christian convert Abbas Soori, 48, to 15 years in prison – 10 years for “propaganda activities” and five years for membership in a house church (“opposition group”), the group reported. Another Christian convert, Mehran Shamloui, 37, received an eight-year sentence for the first charge and two years and eight months for the second.
“All three were also sentenced to years of deprivation of social rights, such as to health, employment or education – 15 years each for Narges and Abbas, and 11 years for Mehran – while Narges and Abbas were fined 330 million tomans ($3,500 USD) each, and Mehran 250 million ($2,750 USD),” Article 18 reported in a press statement. “Narges and Abbas were also banned from membership of any group, residing in their home province of Tehran or leaving Iran for two years after their release.”
Authorities arrested the three Christians on Nov. 3 in simultaneous raids on their homes in Tehran, with intelligence agents confiscating personal belongings including Bibles, crosses and musical instruments. Mehran, a musician, lost equipment valued at approximately $5,500 USD in the raids, the group reported.
The Christians were then transferred to Ward 209 of Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, under control of the Ministry of Intelligence. A month later they were released on bail equivalent to more than $20,000 USD following a series of lengthy and intensive interrogations, Article 18 reported.
Their court hearing took place on Feb. 15 at Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, where they were officially charged with “membership of opposition groups,” “propaganda against the system” and “propaganda activities contrary to Islamic law through foreign relations,” under Articles 499, 500 and 500 bis, respectively.
Also on the day of arrests, Nov. 3, at least 10 other Christians were detained during coordinated raids on Christian homes in cities across the country, including Karaj (near Tehran), Mashhad in the northeast and Shiraz and Bandar Abbas in the south, Article 18 reported.
Soori had previously been arrested in 2020 and later sentenced alongside another Christian convert, Maryam Mohammadi, and their pastor, Iranian-Armenian Anooshavan Avedian. Soori and Mohammadi received non-custodial punishments including travel bans, exile from the province of Tehran and prohibition of membership in any political or social groups, the group stated.
Pastor Avedian, who is in his 60s, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was acquitted in September after serving just over a year of his sentence, according to Article 18.
Cases leaked last year of 327 Christians charged with crimes related to their faith showed how the Islamist regime politicizes religious activity, Article 18 recently noted. In one case, attorneys for an elderly Christian sentenced to five years in prison told the court that authorities describing mere attendance at Christian worship as “Zionist” and a threat to national security showed prosecution attempts to inflate charges to justify an illegal conviction and disproportionate sentence.
The Iranian-Armenian Christian from Rasht who was nearly 80 years old at his trial in 2022 was charged with “membership in the community under the name of a home church of “Zionist Evangelical Christianity” with the aim of disrupting the security of the country”; “gathering and colluding against the country’s security”; “disturbing the public mind and disrupting social order through Christian publications with the aim of attracting Muslims”; and “insulting Islamic sacred things,” according to advocacy group Article 18.
As the Iranian regime is based on religious principles, the effects of state religion were seen in the prosecutor quoting Supreme Leader Ali Khameini: “From the spread of unrestrained and immorality, to the promotion of false mysticism, to the promotion of Baha’ism, to the promotion of the network of house churches, these are the things that the enemies of Islam are doing today with study, planning and foresight…to weaken religion in the society.’”
Likewise, the prosecutor quoted the Supreme Leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989, Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, as stating, “If we understand that in our Tehran, the centers of propaganda of the church, Zionism, and Baha’ism have been created, which mislead people and distance them from the rules and teachings of Islam, isn’t it our duty to destroy these centers that harm Islam?”
Armenian and Assyrian Christians whose Orthodox and Catholic faiths are legal in Iran “are aligned with the Islamic Revolution,” the prosecutor said, but “Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the Protestant religion, with their evangelistic nature and the mission of Christianizing Iran, are considered a security threat for the Islamic Revolution.”
Iran ranked ninth on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL) of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. The report noted that despite persecution, “the church in Iran is growing steadily.”
