WNG – Iranian judge sentences Catholic convert to prison over propaganda charge
The Persian-language group Human Rights Activists News Agency, HRANA, on Friday reported that an Iranian judge sentenced Ghazal Marzban to nine years and eight months in prison. The 41-year-old female Roman Catholic convert received her sentence from Judge Iman Afshari of Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran. Authorities charged Marzban with engaging in propaganda against Islam.
Is this sentencing coming only because she’s a Catholic? HRANA’s past reports state that Iranian authorities first arrested Marzban on Nov. 5, 2024, and locked her in Evin Prison for two months. Authorities arrested Marzban for her involvement in an anti-Islamic regime protest, HRANA said. They also accused her of appearing in public while not wearing a hijab.
Article 18, a Christian persecution watchdog, claimed those charges were unrelated to Marzban’s Catholic faith. However, Article 18 also noted that she engaged in the anti-Islam protest in response to harassment she received following her religious conversion. HRANA also reported that Marzaban had possibly suffered religious discrimination, saying she’d experienced difficulty obtaining medication to treat her husband’s Parkinson’s disease.
Marzban served only two months of a six-month prison sentence following her 2024 arrest. She also received a suspension of mobile phone usage for five years and 74 lashes. But authorities rearrested Marzban on Jan. 15 of this year. They confiscated her Bible and other Christian literature in her possession during that arrest.