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Article Excerpt
GENEVA -- The idea was to help poor children, not land in jail.
But prison time was the result for three Bahai'is in the Iranian city of Shiraz after they helped start social service projects to help underprivileged children and youth.
Haleh Rouhi, 29, Raha Sabet, 33, and Sasan Taqva, 32, were each sentenced to four years in prison and then suddenly taken into custody on 19 November 2007.
The crime the three were charged with, according to a government official, is "propaganda against the regime." That's what judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told the Agence France Presse at a press briefing in Tehran on 29 January 2008.
Accounts that have emerged from Iran tell a far different story. According to Diane Ala'i, a Baha'i International Community representative to the United Nations in Geneva, the three were in fact engaged in social service projects that most governments would praise.
"Far from working against the government, the Baha'is who were arrested in May 2006 were engaged in humanitarian projects aimed at helping underprivileged young people in the city of Shiraz," said Ms. Ala'i.
"Charges by the government that suggest...
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