Martyrdom: Another Iranian Pastor Killed

Another Protestant pastor has been killed in Iran, the fourth to be murdered since January 1994. According to Iranian Christian groups in the West, Mohammed Bagher Yusefi, a 34-year-old Assemblies of God pastor, was found dead September 28 in northwest Iran. Local authorities discovered Yusefi’s body hanged on a tree near his home in the province of Mazandaran.

Yusefi converted to Christianity from Islam a decade ago and was known by the Christian name Ravanbakhsh, which means “soul giver” in Farsi. Under Iran’s strict Islamic regime, apostasy or abandoning Islam is a crime punishable by death.

The Great Britain-based Elam Ministries reported that Yusefi had left his house at 6 a.m. to pray in a forest but never returned. Iranian sources told the Colorado Springs-based Iranian Christians International that Yusefi had been detained by local police prior to his death.

“There can hardly be any doubt that [Yusefi] has been martyred because he was a Christian leader from a Muslim background,” asserted a statement from Elam Ministries.

Yusefi, who studied theology at the Garden of Sharon Bible School in Karaj, pastored churches in the cities of Sari, Gorgan, and Ghaem-Shahr. According to Iranian Christians International, the three congregations were all underground churches that had been officially closed by the government’s Ministry of Islamic Guidance. Friends described Yusefi as a “gifted evangelist” who wrote many indigenous Christian songs. Yusefi is survived by his wife, Akhtar; a daughter, 9; and a son, 7.

Yusefi had ties to several other ministers who were recently murdered in Iran. He was appointed to become a pastor in 1990 by Haik Hovsepian-Mehr, an Assemblies of God superintendent murdered in January 1994 (CT, March 7, 1994, p. 58). Just before his murder, Hovsepian-Mehr had led a successful international campaign to secure the release of Mehdi Dibaj, another Assemblies of God minister who had been imprisoned on apostasy charges in Iran for nearly a decade because of his conversion from Islam.

Dibaj was murdered less than six months after Hovsepian-Mehr (CT, Aug. 15, 1994, p. 54). Yusefi had helped to raise Dibaj’s two sons during the time Dibaj was imprisoned. Another prominent leader, Presbyterian pastor Tateos Michaelian was murdered around the same time as Dibaj.

Yusefi’s wife converted to Christianity under the ministry of Hussein Soodmand, yet another Assemblies of God convert pastor, killed in an Iranian prison in 1990.

In a statement, Doug Clark, Assemblies of God director for the Middle East, said the deaths of so many evangelical pastors has been devastating for the tiny Iranian Christian community, which is estimated to number fewer than 15,000. “The Iranian Assemblies of God has lost nearly 25 percent of its ministers,” Clark said.

A statement from Iranian Christians International asserted that “persecution of Iranian Muslim converts to Christianity and other evangelical Christians in Iran is more severe and widespread than previous reports indicated,” with pastors and underground church leaders facing escalating surveillance and arrest. “When will these atrocities against Christians end?” the statement asked.