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| Esmaeil Falahati |Courtesy Esmaeil Falahati |
By Samuel Smith
Christian Post
A pastor who fled to Turkey after spending over a month in Iran’s most notorious prison is desperate for help as he and his family are facing deportation, which would result in his imprisonment and possible torture.
Pastor Esmaeil Falahati, a former Muslim who came to Christ at age 23 and planted house churches across Tehran for a decade, told The Christian Post that his family might soon have to flee after four years in Turkey or run the risk of being sent back to the Islamic Republic.
In Iran, Falahati is a convicted man set to serve years in prison because he preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a community of ex-Muslims trying to live out their new faith in peace.
Along with his wife, Falahati secretly led worship services and traveled to the homes of fellow convert believers.
But in August 2015, plainclothes police officers interrupted a prayer service attended by over 30 people in a garden in west Tehran. Falahati has suspicion to believe that they had been “ratted out” as Iran’s Shia theocratic regime bans Christians from sharing their faith with non-Christians.
All were arrested and questioned for hours, he said, while police searched the pastor’s house, gathered Bibles and other Christian items. Eventually, Falahati, the owner of the garden and two others were transferred to section 209 of Evin Prison.
Falahati spent 33 days in solitary confinement and was eventually charged with propagating against the Islamic regime and intent to disrupt national security.
“I was tortured and questioned about my services and preaching the Bible,” the pastor said through a translator, adding that he lost a lot of weight and suffered from medical problems during imprisonment.
During his imprisonment, his wife and family were also arrested, tortured and questioned for 12 hours for supporting his case.
On Sept. 9, 2015, Falahati was temporarily released on bail by the Revolutionary Court. He said he was told by guards that it would be better for him to leave Iran or run the risk of being harmed.
About 40 days later, Falahati, his wife and two children fled their native land. And a month after that, the family arrived in Turkey and registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The family has been in Muslim-majority Turkey, a NATO ally, for nearly four years.
However, Falahati contends that the Turkish immigration department has not given his family a fair shake, especially after Turkish authorities found out about his new ministry work preaching to families in Turkey.
“We don’t receive any services which are provided for other refugees,” Falahati said. “We have no security, identity and nationality only for the crime of being Christian. It seems that we are in a bigger prison.”
Turkey on Edge
The family arrived in Turkey the year before the July 2016 coup attempt against the government of authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took place.
In retaliation, Erdogan began an enormous crackdown on anything and anyone it suspected of having ties to the coup attempt or groups the government considers to be terrorists.
The Erdogan government reportedly detained over 160,000 people for questioning and formally arrested 77,000 people for alleged links to terror.
As Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees of any country worldwide (over 3.6 million Syrian refugees), the country has in recent years carried out mass deportations or forced returns of Syrian and Afghan refugees.
"Turkey has welcomed millions of refugees over the past decade, a situation which has put great strain on the nation’s economic and social systems," Claire Evans, a regional manager for the U.S.-based persecution advocacy nonprofit International Christian Concern told CP. "Most refugees live in Turkey for many years before they are placed in a new country. Since the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey has become more closed towards any foreigners."
The Turkish government has been accused of deporting dozens of foreign pastors and missionaries.
Although President Donald Trump seems to have an improved relationship with Erdogan today, the Erdogan government had arrested and detained North Carolina missionary Andrew Brunson for over two years before his release in 2018 on trumped-up charges of terror connections.
Brunson, who spent over 23 years in Turkey before his arrest, told the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in June that he knows of dozens of foreign church leaders and their family members that Turkey has deported in recent months for being a “threat to national security.”
Joining the list of deportees soon could be Falahati and his family.
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