Middle East

After nine days in secret police custody, Reza Montazami and his wife, Fereshteh Dibaj, were released on bail this morning by order of a Revolutionary Court in Mashhad, Iran.

Iran’s feared secret police have detained a Christian couple in the northeastern city of Mashhad, forcing them to leave behind their 6-year-old daughter, a Christian news agency reported late Friday, September 29.

Islamic violence against Iraq’s Christian minority has increased in recent days killing at least two people, as the Muslim month of “Ramadan and statements [about Islam] from Pope Benedict XVI have ignited an explosive atmosphere,” well-informed religious rights investigators said Thursday, September 28.

An Iranian court has temporarily released an Iranian man who Christians say may be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity, reports said Monday, September 4.

Maronite Catholics attacked a newly-built, independent Baptist church near Beirut this month, mauling churchgoers preparing to host war refugees from southern Lebanon.

Families of five jailed Christians have lost their homes northeast of Cairo after authorities persuaded them to turn over deeds to their property in exchange for what was supposed to be the release of relatives accused of murder.

As a teenager, they trained him to kill Christians and Jews as Beirut dissolved into the chaos of civil war. Before his 17th birthday, his fellow street warriors credited him with 223 kills — mostly against rival militias. Then a missionary witnessed to him in the streets about one who could remove the bloodguilt that drenched his hands. He listened long enough to lay his guns down forever.

Seven years after Issa Motamedi Mojdehi converted from Islam to Christianity, Iranian secret police have jailed him for abandoning Islam but officially charged him with illegal drug trafficking.

Secret documents show Saddam Hussein’s regime and local Kurdish leaders were involved in the “ethnic cleansing”, “gassing” and “Islamization” of Assyrian Christians in Northern Iraq, with international religious aid organizations refusing to intervene, an Assyrian official claimed Wednesday, August 4.

At least 20 Christians were wounded in Baghdad and Mosul in the largest terrorist attacks against churches ever, reports said Sunday, August 1.