Just a couple of weeks ago, five Christian men, along with their families, were on a weekend trip to a garden in Iran's Firouz-kouh county when they were arrested and taken to an unspecified location.
A day later, one of the five, Amir Saman Dashti, managed to contact his family, informing them of the incident an the fact that they had since been detained at Iran's notorious Evin prison.
The families of the four other Christian men involved, who were identified as Ramil Bet-Tamraz, Amin Afshar Naderi, Hadi Asgari, Mohammad Dehnavi, tried to contact them to no avail. Prison authorities refrained from sharing any concrete information with the families.
As Mohabat News reports, the norm in cases of faith-related arrests is that the families of those detained are successful in contacting their own. However, in these arrests, neither the families, nor their lawyers, have managed to locate the whereabouts of the Christian prisoners.
What makes matters worse is that this is not an isolated case. Some time last month, eleven members of a church in the Iranian city of Esfahan were also arrested, with the families of the prisoners having yet received any concrete news about their whereabouts.
Mohabat News also explains that there is a restriction on free exchange of information in the country, as well as by the stringent regulations imposed upon the citizens of the country.Added to this are the allegations that the families of the Christians arrested are warned not to make these detentions public.
Although the Islamic revolution occurred way back in 1979, Iranian Christians continue to be accused of threatening national security and spying through evangelism.