The Washington Post – Just days after Iran released two Americans accused of spying, an Iranian court has upheld the apostasy conviction and execution sentence of Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.

The 11th branch of Iran’s Gilan Provincial Court has determined that Nadarkhani has Islamic ancestry and therefore must recant his faith in Jesus Christ. Iran’s supreme court had previously ruled that the trial court must determine if Youcef had been a Muslim before converting to Christianity.

However, the judges, acting like terrorists with a hostage, demanded that he recant his faith in Christ before even taking evidence. The judges stated that even though the judgment they have made is against the current Iranian and international laws, they have to uphold the previous decision of the 27th Branch of the Supreme Court in Qom.

When asked to “repent” by the judges, Youcef stated, “Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?” The judges replied , “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” To which he replied, “I cannot.”

It is reported that Youcef was able to see his children for the first time since March and was in good spirits speaking of how he longed to serve the church upon his release.

Pastor Youcef will be brought to the court for two additional “hearings” on September 27th and 28th for the sole purpose of being called upon to recant his Christian faith. TheACLJ’s sources report that although Pastor Youcef’s attorneys will attempt to appeal the case, there is no guarantee that the provincial court will not act on its own interpretation of Sharia law and execute pastor Youcef as early as Wednesday.

Technically, there is no right of appeal, and under Iran’s interpretation of Hadith and Sharia law, Pastor Youcef is to be given three chances to recant. He has already been asked to recant twice, and will be asked to do so again Tuesday. If he does not recant his Christian faith, he could be executed at any time.

We are continuing to press for the international community to take note of Youcef’s situation and call for his unconditional release. We are also continuing to work with members of Congress and are urging the State Department to get involved to save the life of this Christian pastor.

There is still time to save this pastor’s life.

Please share Youcef’s situation with anyone you know and pray for his release and the safety of his attorney, a brave Muslim who has been sentenced to nine years in prison and banned from practicing law by the Iranian government.

UPDATE: Today, Firouz Sadegh-Khandjani, a Member of the Council of Elders for the Church of Iran and a close personal friend of Youcef, called into my radio show from Iran to provide an update on Pastor Youcef. You can listen to the interview here.

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UPI – A sharp rise in the number of executions reported in Iran is raising suspicions that the Tehran regime has, in the words of a British newspaper, engaged in “a judicial killing spree” to intimidate its opponents.

Human rights organizations say this underlines the alarm within the regime that Iran could be infected by the wave of pro-democracy uprisings that have swept the Arab world since January and toppled three dictators.

The Tehran regime has cracked down hard on political dissidents since a major confrontation with protesters during the hotly disputed 2009 presidential election when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a second four-year term.

Thousands of dissidents were arrested and reportedly continue to be harassed and persecuted.

Amnesty International said there were 253 reported executions in the first six months of 2011, with another 300 people believed to have been killed. These included the first executions of juvenile offenders in the world this year.

In February, Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist and former judge awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, accused Tehran of using criminal charges, narcotics in particular, to mask executions for political purposes.

“A second-term presidency launched amid bloodily suppressed riots in 2009 now appears to be assuming an even more vicious character as reports accumulate of ongoing secret mass executions and new waves of political repression,” foreign affairs columnist Simon Tisdall wrote in The Guardian of London recently.

These events “suggest the regime is embarked on what is in effect a judicial killing spree,” he wrote.

There was a sharp rise in the number of executions last December and January. The United Nations reported that 66 people were executed in Iran in January.

Most were reportedly related to narcotics crimes but three political activists arrested in 2009 were among those hanged, the office of the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights reported.

“It’s no coincidence that Iran’s increased staging of public executions came at the same time protest movements were gaining steam throughout the Middle East,” Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador wrote in the Los Angeles Times recently.

“What better way to keep Iranians from having ‘dangerous ideas’ like those of their neighbors?”

The United Nations says executions in Iran in the early part of the year were running at three times the rate of 2010 when about 18-25 people were executed monthly. The United Nations estimated that about 300 executions, most of them undeclared, took place in 2010.

Iran Human Rights, an independent monitoring organization, reported that 25 people were executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, 25 miles west Tehran, July 3, with another seven in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. All were allegedly drug-related.

Another frenzy of executions was reported two months later in the same two prisons. The state-owned newspaper IRAN said 22 men convicted of drug trafficking were hanged Sept. 19 in Evin and Ghezel Hesar.

Iran Human Rights said it had uncorroborated evidence that mass executions took place during 2010 in prisons in Khorasan province in northeastern Iran.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a non-governmental group, reported in 2010 that undeclared mass executions had taken place in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad, one of the holiest cities in Shiite Islam.

Ten prisoners were reported to have been hanged there Oct. 12, 2010. ICHRI quoted a former inmate as saying he’d witnessed 49 executions in one day in October 2009.

Mashhad, 530 miles east of Tehran, is the capital of Razavi Khorasan province. It’s a smuggling center for opium and heroin from neighboring Afghanistan.

Iran is a key conduit for large volumes of narcotics from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed westward through Turkey to Europe.

Narcotics use is alarmingly high in Iran and eradicating it has become a national priority. Some 3,500 security officers have been killed fighting smuggling gangs over the last two decades.

In 2010, amid growing criticism of Iran in the West for the growing number of executions in prison, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Ramin Mehmanparast denounced the West for its condemnation.

He claimed 80 percent of those hanged were drug smugglers and declared, “If Iran does not combat drugs, Europe and the West will be hurt.”

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