Campaign begins to free Saeed Abedini from Iranian prison as he reaches out to President
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has launched the largest campaign in its history with aims of sending thousands of letters each week to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, petitioning for U.S. Pastor Saeed Adedini, who has been imprisoned for 52 weeks.
“Using a brand-new website that raises awareness for the persecuted church and gives a voice to the voiceless, we’re asking you to write a letter to President Hassan Rouhani asking that he free Pastor Saeed,” ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow said in a letter to supporters on Monday.
“We’ve written text you can use, or you can customize to send your own message, but our goal is simple: 52,000 letters asking President Rouhani to save Saeed.”
Saeed is also directly appealing to newly elected President Hassan Rouhani for justice and freedom. In a letter written to the Iranian president, Pastor Saeed, a U.S. citizen, called on the new president to follow through on his pledge of moderation and pleads for compassion and justice so he can return to his wife and children in the United States.
In his letter to President Rouhani, Pastor Saeed provides details about his work in Iran and the fact he was completing work on an orphanage when he was taken into custody. He writes about the abuse and internal bleeding he has suffered as a result of his year-long imprisonment. He also calls on the president to follow through on his promise of moderation and urges the Iranian leader to exhibit compassion and justice so he can return to his family in the United States.
“My wife and children as well as over a billion Christians in the world seek God’s justice and then your consideration of this matter,” Pastor Saeed wrote.
“Please take immediate action in this regard and do not let me and a lot of people in my ward become the victims of the fire that extremists have made, those who have turned Iran into a vortex of crisis. Considering the fact that I came to Iran to serve the orphans, please do not let them make my children orphans and my wife without a guardian.”
At BeHeardProject.com, you can draft your own letter to President Rouhani or add your name to a letter than has been written. The goal: send the president 52,000 letters – 1,000 letters for each week that Pastor Saeed has been imprisoned – asking him to save this 33-year-old U.S. citizen.
“Over the last weekend my family celebrated my daughter’s seventh birthday, the second birthday in a row my precious Rebekkah celebrated without her father,” said Naghmeh Abedini, Pastor Saeed’s wife. “When asked what she wanted for her birthday, she said she just wanted her daddy home. The reality of his absence is inescapable.”
Abedini has been in Evin Prison in Tehran since his arrest last year, and was later sentenced to eight years in jail, supposedly for endangering national security. The ACLJ, which represents his wife, Naghmeh, and their two young children in the U.S., says that Iran has targeted the pastor for his Christian faith.
Naghmeh details Saeed’s arrest and case in a recent interview with Dispatch Radio, more here
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