Abedini: I Was Beaten After Refusing to Sign False Confessions

Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor who was released by Iran last week, told Fox News in an interview that he was beaten and placed in solitary confinement after refusing to sign fabricated confessions.

Mr. Abedini, who returned to America about nine days after his release and transfer to Germany, said that after refusing to sign confessions, he was held in a cell at Tehran’s Evin prison with an al-Qaeda prisoner for a period of time, and that prisoner once attempted to kill him.

In response to a Fox News reporter’s question about whether he was tortured, he said: “Yes, once during interrogation they beat me severely because they wanted me to write something that I refused to accept…. We were in court when the judge closed the door and the interrogators started beating me, and that’s when I started bleeding from my stomach.”

He also said in this interview that he was cellmates with Amir Hekmati, another American prisoner in Iran, for about two months, which he described as one of the positive aspects of his imprisonment.

Mr. Abedini, 35, was born in Iran but became a U.S. citizen.

The Christian pastor was arrested in September 2012 on charges of establishing house churches with the intent to undermine national security and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Mr. Abedini told Fox News that the judge told him “you came to Iran to overthrow the government under the pretext of establishing house churches with the help of Christianity,” an accusation that Mr. Abedini has rejected.

He was one of five Americans released by Iran in exchange for the freedom of seven Iranians in the United States.

Jason Rezaian, Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, and Matt Trevithick were released on Saturday, January 16. Four of them immediately left Iran, and the fifth, Nosratollah Khosravi, is reported to have left Iran subsequently.

Their exchange took place simultaneously with the lifting of sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program on the day of implementation of the comprehensive nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers—the United States, France, China, Russia, Britain, and Germany.

Seven Iranians were freed from prison in the United States, and according to the Washington Post, most of them remain in America.