TURKEY: IRANIAN ATHEIST RISKS DEATH PENALTY IF REPATRIATED
(ANSAmed) - ANKARA, NOVEMBER 30 - Turkish authorities will be
announcing their decision in the coming days over whether or not
to repatriate an Iranian citizen who - having escaped from her
country after publicly declaring she was an atheist - could be
sentenced to death for apostasy if sent back.
Negar Azizmoradi, Iranian leader of the controversial
International Raelian Movement, was arrested just over a week
ago in Istanbul on her arrival in the city with an "irregular"
passport, and since then has been held in a refugee centre in
the Turkish metropolis.
Raelians are part of a sect founded in 1974 by the former
sports journalist Claude Vorilhon, 63, as known as Rael. His
followers believe that human beings were created on Earth by
extraterrestrials with biogenetical engineering, and therefore
consider themselves to be atheist and support human cloning,
which they believe to be the key to eternal life.
Appeals to help the thirty-something Iranian woman have been
launched by both the Raelian movement and Iranian refugee groups
abroad. In them, Turkish authorities have been asked to release
the woman - who reportedly has caught a lung infection in jail -
and allow her to go to a European country.(ANSAmed).
2009-11-30 10:47