The body of a Muslim convert to Christianity who went missing in mid-July, has been returned to his family, slaughtered and cut into four pieces by Islamic extremists, according to a report from the Barnabas Fund which monitored the incident.
Two and one-half weeks after an Ethiopian Christian was deported from Saudi Arabia for alleged “Christian activities,” a fellow Christian prisoner of Eritrean citizenship remains jailed in Jeddah.
Six weeks after a Sudanese court jailed an Episcopal priest for refusing to tear down his own church, the Rev. Samuel Dobai Amum has been set free, with the legal process set in motion for his Khartoum North parish to obtain official ownership of its land.
Asmara Police Jail, Punish 56 Prisoners Special to Compass Direct LOS ANGELES, May 8 (Compass) — Eritrean security police arrested two full-time evangelists and another 54 members of the Rema Church last night in Asmara, hauling them off to a local police station for holding illegal prayer meetings in two homes of their members. The prayer meetings were in progress in the capital’s Kahawta district when security forces raided the homes about 6 p.m., forcing the Protestant believers to stop their worship. The jailed Christians, 21 women and 35 men, remained under detention today at the No. 7 Police Station … Read more
An Arab convert to Christianity was killed in a bomb blast last night outside his Tripoli apartment, adjacent to the home of a European missionary family thought to have been targeted in the attack.
A zealous Christian preacher in the northern Nigeria city of Kano and six members of his family died in a house fire on April 22. Christian leaders in the city believe Muslim militants deliberately set the fatal blaze.
Violence in predominantly Christian Plateau State in Nigeria has continued unabated since the first major outbreak in Jos, in 2001 when over 2,000 people are thought to have died in orchestrated inter religious violence.
A total of 170 Protestant Christians have been jailed, beaten and threatened with death by Eritrean security forces in a harsh crackdown during February and March.
More than 100 persons died when a Muslim mob attacked a Christian community in western Nigeria’s Adamawa state apparently in retaliation for the deaths of 16 Muslims three months ago.
Kurdish Christian Ziwar Mohammed Ismaeel was shot dead in front of his taxi stand last month in Zakho, the northern-most city in the Kurdish safe-haven of Northern Iraq.
WACO, Texas (Compass) — Imprisoned Christian aid workers Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were freed from Afghanistan’s Taliban as the country fell, city by city, to opposition forces. But a homecoming worship service showed they haven’t forgotten believers still in captivity.
NEW DELHI, October 26 (Compass) — Christian leaders planning to attend a large anti-caste system “conversion” rally in New Delhi on November 4 are bracing for a Hindu extremist backlash.
ISTANBUL, January 30 (Compass) — A Sudanese convert to Christianity was refused permission to board a flight to Uganda this morning at the Khartoum airport, where state security police said their computers identified him as a criminal.
Turkmenistan’s most prominent religious prisoner, the Baptist Shageldy Atakov, has been freed before the end of his four-year sentence, Keston News Service has learnt. The US-based Russian Evangelistic Ministries and the German-based Friedensstimme Mission, which maintain close ties with Baptists in the former Soviet republics, have both confirmed that Atakov was released from prison in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) early on 8 January and has now been reunited with his wife Artygul and five children in the town of Kaakhka close to Turkmenistan’s southern border with Iran. “Jesus has given me a Christmas gift,” Atakov was quoted as saying (many Christians in the region celebrate Christmas on 7 January).
Sary Mirzoyev, pastor of the Love Baptist Church in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, has told Keston News Service that he will fight attempts next week to liquidate his church as a legal entity. The hearing in the liquidation suit, brought by Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, begins on 23 January at the court of Baku’s Narimanov district. Aliev is alleging that Pastor Mirzoyev preached against Islam and that therefore the church has violated the country’s religion law and should be liquidated. “They have alleged that we are arousing religious hatred,” Pastor Mirzoyev told Keston from Baku on 18 January. “I said nothing against Islam or against Muslims.”
The hearing in the case to liquidate the Love Baptist Church in the Azerbaijani capital Baku was postponed yesterday (23 January), the church’s pastor Sary Mirzoyev told Keston News Service from Baku. The Narimanov district court had been due to hear the suit, brought by Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, in the afternoon of 23 January (see KNS 18 January 2002) but the court agreed to the defendant’s request to postpone the hearing because of ill health. Yahya Mamedov, the church’s deacon and administrator, suffers from diabetes. No date has yet been set for a new hearing, but it is likely to be in about ten days’ time.
Evangelical church leaders Kiros Meles and Abebayeh Desalegn walked free today after being jailed without charges for 10 months in the northern Ethiopian town of Maychew.
LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) — “Advent in Afghanistan†may have been the largest public outreach by Christians to students in the history of Afghanistan. It began when Norm and Cher Nelson, from the radio ministry, Compassion Radio, accepted an invitation to take the experience of Christmas to 30,000 school children in 49 schools in an historic region of Afghanistan during late November and early December 2002.
Evangelical Christians in northern Ethiopia confirmed yesterday that instead of being released as expected, two local church elders jailed without charges for 10 months were remanded back to prison two days ago by a local court judge.
Indian Christian, Prabhu Isaac, is due to be deported from Jiddah tonight after spending more than six months in Saudi prisons in connection with his Christian faith.