Lawyer ‘optimistic’ death sentence for Iran Christian will be quashed

Iran’s supreme court is likely to revoke the death sentence passed on a Christian pastor for apostasy, his lawyer has said.

Yousof Nadarkhani, 33, was arrested and sentenced to death in Iran’s northern city of Rasht in 2009. An appeals court upheld his sentence last year after he refused to reconvert to Islam, his lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, said yesterday.

“I am optimistic that the supreme court in Qom will drop the case altogether … I think that the court decision will come out next Monday,” Mr Dadkhah said.

A branch of Iran’s supreme court that handles religious matters is located in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom in central Iran.

Mr Nadarkhani, a member of the protestant evangelical church of Iran and a father of two, had been given three chances to recant by the appeals court, Mr Dadkhah said. But the lawyer said his client’s sentence was based on fatwas issued by a senior cleric, now dead, but at least three others had challenged the ruling.

“My client refuses to recant … our argument is that the preliminary sentence was incorrect since apostasy does not exist as an offence in Iran’s Islamic penal code,” Mr Dadkhah said.

“The court cannot rely on the religious opinion of a Islamic jurisprudent against three others,” he added.

Mr Dadkhah said he had seen his client several times in prison in Rasht last week, adding: “Physically he looks weak but emotionally his belief in Christ is keeping his spirits high.”

Dadkhah told Human Rights Watch that his client converted to Christianity at the age of 19, and that prior to that “he did not consider himself a Muslim or an adherent of any religion”.