After three-and-a-half-years of imprisonment in Iran, American pastor Saeed Abedini has been released.
He was freed Jan. 16 and arrived in the United States on Jan. 21 after receiving medical care in Germany.
Abedini was staying at a retreat center with his parents until his wife, Naghmeh, and two children arrived Jan. 25, according to news reports.
Naghmeh Abedini said prior to his arrival in the U.S., “We are ready to welcome him home. … The kids are really excited because they are making welcome home signs.
“There’s a lot of readjustment and a lot of healing that needs to happen,” she said. “It’s time for our family to heal and to move forward.”
Saeed Abedini was serving an eight-year prison sentence because of his Christian faith.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) lobbied extensively for Saeed Abedini’s release, which was announced the morning of Jan. 16, but had been considered imminent for two months, ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow said in a video on the ACLJ website.
Grateful for support
In a conversation with Sekulow, the pastor expressed thanks for his release.
“I cannot underscore enough how grateful he is for the tireless efforts of the millions of people who prayed and spoke out for his freedom over the last nearly three-and-a-half years,” Sekulow said of Saeed Abedini.
“In a phone call from a U.S. military hospital in Germany where he’s being treated, Pastor Saeed thanked our entire ACLJ team and the more than 1.1 million ACLJ members who worked to secure his freedom, saying, ‘May God bless you for everything you did.’”
In several of Naghmeh Abedini’s Facebook posts she spoke of her husband’s health.
“I am talking to Saeed right now,” she posted at 3:39 p.m. Jan. 17. “He is doing well. Thank you all for your prayers.”
Saeed Abedini had already landed in Germany, via Geneva, Switzerland, his wife noted.
She spoke with President Barack Obama a couple hours earlier.
“President Obama just … called [me] moments ago and congratulated our family on Saeed’s release,” she wrote just after 1 p.m.
Negotiations
“We had met with President Obama [in 2015] and he had promised that getting Saeed out of Iran was a high priority for him,” she wrote. “I could see his love and compassion as he spoke last year and again today.”
The Obama administration secured the release of Saeed Abedini and three other Americans in a prisoner swap amid nuclear disarmament negotiations.
In turn, the U.S. is granting clemency to six Iranian-Americans and one Iranian serving sentences or awaiting trial in the U.S., President Obama announced.
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, U.S. Marine veteran Amir Hekmati of Flint, Michigan, and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari also were released, although Khosravi-Roodsari has chosen to remain in Iran, NBC News reported.
‘Move of God’
Released independently of the prisoner exchange was Matthew Trevithick, a Boston University graduate studying Farsi in Tehran, who has already arrived at his home in Hingham, Massachusetts, according to NBC News.
The release of Saeed Abedini and the other Americans was the result of prayer and the Lord’s intervention, Sekulow noted.
“We want to rejoice that the Lord has set these individuals free,” Sekulow said.
“At the end of the day this was a move of God because so many circumstances had to line up correctly for this to happen, and it did,” he said. “And that’s not humans doing that; that is the Lord and we were just instruments to do our part.”
Saeed Abedini had been sentenced Jan. 27, 2013, on charges he threatened national security by planting house churches in Iran years earlier and had been under house arrest since July 2012.
(BP)
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