Watchdog

The Center For Human Rights In Iran (CHRI) has voiced concern over what it says is a "disturbing trend" of arrests and imprisonments of Christian converts in Iran.

The New York-based rights group said on July 20 that in less than two months, eleven Christian converts and the former leader of the Assyrian Pentecostal Church in Iran have been sentenced to long prison terms.

"Christians are recognized as an official religious minority in Iran's Constitution, but the state continues to persecute members of the faith, especially converts," CHRI’s executive director, Hadi Ghaemi, said in a statement.

Activists say that dozens of Christian converts have been arrested and harassed in recent years in Iran, where according to applied Islamic laws a Muslim who converts to another faith can face the death penalty.

Christian groups say that that the number of converts in Iran is growing despite the state pressure.

A court in Moscow has sentenced a man who took part in an antigovernment protest on March 26 to 2 1/2 years in a so-called colony settlement.

The Tver district court on July 20 found Stanislav Zimovets guilty of causing bodily harm to a law-enforcement officer and sentenced him the same day.

The March 26 rally, one of the largest protests in Russia in years, was not sanctioned by authorities.

Zimovets, who initially confessed to throwing a brick at a police officer, later pleaded not guilty, saying he was not aiming at the police officer, but threw the brick in an open space in order to warn police and stop law-enforcement forces from violently dispersing the protesters.

Zimovets is the third participant in the March 26 protests in Moscow, who was convicted.

He and four other people -- Yury Kuliy, Aleksandr Shpakov, Dmitry Krepkin, and Andrei Kosykh -- were arrested on suspicion of attacking the policeman at the rally.

In May, Kuliy and Shpakov were sentenced on the same charges to eight months and 18 months in a penal colony, respectively.

Police detained more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone over the anticorruption rallies across Russia organized by opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, the biggest demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin's government since a wave of protests in 2011-12.

Based on reporting by tvrain.ru and TASS