"Lale Saati" sentenced to two years in prison for the crime of baptism
"Lale Saati" was sentenced to two years in prison for the crime of baptism.
Laleh Saati, a Christian citizen, was sentenced to two years in prison and a two-year ban on leaving the country on Monday, April 26, 2024, on charges of "acting against national security through association with Christian Zionist organizations."
She was arrested on February 14th of last year when security agents raided her father's house in Tehran and was tried on March 16th by Judge Iman Afshari, head of Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, on charges of "acting against national security." Her case file states that after returning to Iran, Ms. Saati was engaged in religious activities and attending house churches, and by examining the contents of her cell phone, they gained access to images, including the baptismal certificate and video of her baptism in Malaysia and other activities in the Malaysian church.
Laleh Saati resided in Malaysia and was forced to return to Iran in 2017 due to the lengthy process of processing her asylum case, the precarious economic situation, and the loneliness of her parents due to their old age. After her return to Iran, she was repeatedly pressured and interrogated by security forces.
It should be noted that Ms. Saati was deprived of the right to choose a lawyer by the judiciary through the application of Article 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and her trial was conducted in the presence of a hired lawyer.
According to reports from human rights organizations, Laleh Saati was interrogated by intelligence agents for more than a month and then transferred to the women's ward of Evin Prison. Hossein Ahmadiniaz, a lawyer based in the Netherlands who has defended a number of civil society activists and prisoners of conscience in Iran, emphasized the unfairness of the Iranian judicial system, saying: "The issue is that the mere existence of a film on a mobile phone camera cannot be evidence of a crime or the defendant being charged; but because the judicial and security system does not follow the rule of law and is simply seeking to suppress, harass, and inhumanely harass citizens, especially in ideological and political cases, it has resorted to illegal detention and illegal prosecution. This means that this issue has fundamental and fundamental flaws in terms of both formal and substantive laws. The main problem lies in the lack of the right to a fair trial."
The UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran and human rights organizations have repeatedly published numerous reports, providing documents and evidence, on the repression and discrimination against Christians, which show that the asylum applications of many Christians who have a history of church activity, and some who have been imprisoned for their Christian beliefs and peaceful religious activity, have been rejected.
