Six Intelligence Agents Spent a Sunday Inside St. Peter's Compound So the Families Would Get Used to Them. On July 10 the UN Asked Tehran Eight Questions About It. Sixty Days Later the Answer Is a Guard at the Gate.
Two UN rapporteurs wrote to Tehran on July 10 about St. Peter's: twenty families given two weeks to leave, pastors threatened with arrest, six intelligence agents on site so residents would get used to them. Iran let sixty days pass. The letter is public, and the church is shut and guarded.
On Sunday, June 28, six agents of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence walked into the compound of St. Peter's Evangelical Church in central Tehran and stayed for several hours. They told the families who live there why they had come. They had come so that the residents would get used to them.
That detail sits on the first page of a letter two United Nations special rapporteurs sent to Tehran on July 10. The UN publishes such letters after sixty days whether or not the government answers. Iran did not answer. So the letter is public now, and with it the eight numbered questions Tehran was asked and chose to leave on the desk.
The Red Lighthouse reported the eviction in July, when the last family left. What is new is the record. The rapporteurs have now said, in writing, what happened after they wrote: the compound has been confiscated, the families are gone, the church has been forcibly closed, and guards stand outside to keep worshippers from going back in.
The General Assembly's general debate opens in New York on Tuesday. Iran has a seat in that hall and a microphone. It has had the letter since July 10.
