by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - Three Christians convicted of spreading “Zionist Christianity” in Iran have been ordered to begin serving their prison sentences of between two and five years at the end of this month, Christian Persecution reports.
Members of the non-Trinitarian “Church of Iran,” Ramin Hassanpour, his wife Saeede, and another woman, Sakine (Mehri) Behjati, were first arrested in 2020, Christian Persecution reports. In addition to charges of “spreading Christian Zionism,” they have also been convicted of attending a house church and of “acting against national security.”
The three were granted bail, but have now been ordered to give themselves up to Branch 1 of the Office for the Execution of Judgments in Tehran’s 33rd district on February 28.
A fourth member of their group, Hadi (Moslem) Rahim, has already begun his four-year sentence.
Iran’s totalitarian Islamic regime considers Christianity to be a dangerous Western threat to its own authority and to the religion of Islam. In a website statement, Christian advocacy group Open Doors USA explained: “House groups made up of converts from Muslim backgrounds are often raided, and both their leaders and members have been arrested, prosecuted and given long prison sentences for “crimes against national security.”
Ruled by a virulently anti-semitic and anti-Christian Islamic regime, Iran ranks nine on the US Open Doors Watch List 2022 of top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.