WASHINGTON (BWA)—Hamid Shabanov, a Baptist pastor in Aliabad, Azerbaijan, was arrested June 20, the Baptist World Alliance reported.
Elnur Jabiyev, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Azerbaijan, said the “police claim to have found an illegal weapon in his home.” He denied the allegations against Shabanov and suggested the weapon was planted to incriminate the pastor.
Jabiyev called the arrest “a provocation by the police” and characterized it as “a deliberately targeted action.”
“The police’s aim is to halt Baptist activity and close the church in Aliabad,” he asserted.
Shabanov’s arrest follows on that of Zaur Balaev in May of last year, who also is pastor of a Baptist church in Aliabad. Balaev was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison in August 2007, but he was released in March after protests from the Baptist World Alliance and the European Baptist Federation.
Both Balaev and Shabanov lead house churches with memberships of between 50 and 60 members each.
BWA President David Coffey stated, “The BWA will do all we can to publicize among the world family what has happened in Aliabad” and said “the global family” of Baptists will pray for the Shabanov family.
General Secretary Neville Callam expressed his disappointment at the arrest.
“We are registering our grave disappointment at the denial of religious freedom that is evident in Azerbaijan,” Callum said.
“Our Baptist brothers and sisters in Azerbaijan should be completely assured of the BWA commitment to pray for them as they struggle in the context of oppression, and, as an expression of our historic commitment to personal liberty, freedom and justice, to make representation on their behalf.”
European Baptist Federation General Secretary Tony Peck said, “The EBF is shocked and dismayed to learn that another pastor, Pastor Hamid Shabanov, has been arrested in Aliabad, Azerbaijan, by the police on what clearly seem to be false charges.”
Peck, who is also BWA regional secretary for Europe, appealed to Baptists on the continent to “contact the Azerbaijani Embassy in your own country if there is one, and protest this latest violation of religious freedom.”
He also called “on all the member unions and conventions of the EBF to pray for this situation, that Pastor Hamid might be freed quickly.”
He urged Baptists “to pray that the Azerbaijani’s declared commitment to religious freedom might translate into an ending of the harassment and persecution of Baptists and other minority churches in their country.”
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