Iranian Christian Lida Alexani (58) has been summoned to prison to begin serving her 13-year sentence for “deviant proselytising contrary to the holy religion of Islam” and “gathering and collusion”. Her husband, Iranian-Armenian pastor Joseph Shahbazian, has been in Evin Prison since February 2025 and is serving a 16-year sentence related to his leadership of a house church.
Lida was arrested on 12 April 2025 when Ministry of Intelligence officers raided her home in Tehran, carried out a search and confiscated personal items. She spent a month in Evin Prison, most of it in solitary confinement, before being released on bail equivalent to around €45,000 on 13 May 2025.
On 10 June 2025 Lida and Joseph were charged along with three converts from Islam (Naser Navard Gol-Tapeh, Aida Najaflou and an unnamed woman). According to the prosecutor, evidence of their “crimes” included establishing a home church, holding prayer meetings, conducting baptism, taking communion and celebrating Christmas.
The Christians were sentenced following a trial on 21 October 2025 at the Revolutionary Court of Tehran: Lida to eight years in prison, and the others to ten years. Naser has been in prison since February 2025, while Aida is out on medical leave after fracturing her spine and the unnamed woman is also out on bail.
In July 2026 Lida and Joseph were told that their appeals had failed and that they had been given additional sentences of five and six years respectively for “gathering and collusion”, although they will not have to serve the extra years as only the highest sentence is enforced when there is more than one. The two other woman also appealed and had their sentences upheld, with an additional seven years for Aida and five for the unnamed woman.
Joseph and Naser were previously imprisoned on charges related to their house-church activities. Joseph served over a year of a ten-year sentence for holding church services in his home before his sentence was reduced to two years at a retrial. He was “pardoned” and released in September 2023. Naser served nearly half of a ten-year sentence before being “pardoned” and released in October 2022.
In Iran, Christians of Assyrian or Armenian descent like Lida and Joseph are permitted to meet for worship but not to share their faith, and in recent years several others have also been given prison sentences for ministering to Christian converts.
Article 18’s director Mansour Borji commented, “We call on Iran to adhere to its obligations under international law by ceasing its systematic persecution of Christians, releasing all Christian prisoners of conscience and providing all Christian citizens – whether converts, or those of Armenian and Assyrian descent – with a place in which they may worship, free from fear of arrest and imprisonment.”
(Article 18)
Photo credit: Article 18