Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and beheaded three days later said Thursday, October 12, that the captors demanded his church condemns the pope’s recent comments about Islam and pay a US$350,000 ransom.
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.
On 24 July, an Iranian Christian named Issa Motamadi was imprisoned on account of his faith. French internet news site VoxDei reports that Issa Motamadi, a resident of the north-western town of Resht, the capital of Gilan Province, will soon stand trial before a Revolutionary Tribunal.
Two Ethiopian and two Eritrean Christians remained in a deportation jail Thursday, June 15, after Saudi Arabian police armed with wooden clubs reportedly raided a private Christian worship meeting in the coastal city of Jeddah.
A convert Christian jailed six weeks ago in northern Iran was released last night and reunited with his family.
Christians in and outside Iran launched 40 days of prayer and fasting “for the salvation” of Iran on ‘Ascension Day’, Thursday, May 25, amid concerns over reports of a government backed crackdown on Christian converts and churches in the Islamic state.
An Iranian Christian who converted from Islam 33 years ago is under arrest and interrogation in northern Iran, where secret police have held him incommunicado for the past three weeks.
Egyptian authorities on Monday, April 17, ordered the detention of a Muslim who entered a Cairo church with a knife days after another Muslim stabbed six Christians, killing one, in Alexandria, news reports said.
The lawyer representing Iranian Christian prisoner Hamid Pourmand has petitioned for his early release from Tehran’s Evin Prison this month, during Iran’s annual prisoners’ amnesty, a Christian news agency reported Thursday, March 9.
The Palestinian Bible Society has temporarily closed down its center with bookshop in Gaza City after it came under a bombing threat, said its acting secretary general, Nashat Filmon.
There was concern Sunday, February 26, over the condition of a kidnapped young Christian women in Egypt amid reports she is being held in a Cairo apartment and forced to convert to Islam.