CBN’s viewers have responded overwhelmingly to a story we brought you last week about an Iranian Christian facing deportation by Sweden back to certain danger in Iran.
At this moment, Aideen Strandsson’s future still remains in limbo. She waits for either the possibility of political asylum or to be deported.
The Iranian actress left Islam to become a Christian after having a dream about Jesus. She came to Sweden in 2014 on a work visa.
Aideen has been very public about her new faith, which means she faces prison, rape, and death if returned to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“It is really dangerous for me and I don’t know why immigration doesn’t believe that. I’m really in danger,” Aideen told CBN News.
Even though Sweden’s migration board says, on its own web page, that it will never deport asylum seekers to nations where they face danger, and doing so is a violation of the Geneva convention on refugees, the migration board rejected Aideen’s request for asylum and turned it over to border police for eventual deportation.
“The migration board information regarding Iranian prisons tells us that torture and rape is common and it is a breach of international law to subject any person to such treatment,” Swedish attorney Gabriel Donner said.
So many CBN viewers contacted the migration board after our story aired, that a migration board official contacted CBN News and told us, “…the fact that your readers write to us will not change the Migration Agency’s decision, nor can we change the court’s decision.”
“Her case has been appealed and processed by the Migration Agency and thereafter by the Swedish courts, which have also decided that she cannot be granted asylum,” Ulrika Langels of the Swedish Migration Board wrote.
CBN News has received many offers of help and even asylum for Aideen from other nations. But Strandsson cannot leave Sweden. Her Iranian passport has been taken away.
And she says her first choice is to remain in Sweden, if possible.
Strandsson and other Christian asylum seekers in Sweden face deportation at the same time that the Swedish government has given 150 protected identities to former ISIS fighters who have returned to Sweden so that they can find jobs.
There will be no such help for Aideen.
“They said to me, ‘It’s your personal life and it’s not our problem if you decided to become a Christian, and it’s your problem,'” Aideen said.
Donner says Christians deported to Muslim nations face certain danger.
“Some of them are killed straight off, some of them succeed in going into hiding, some of them escape to another place, but you are putting them at risk,” Donner said.
Migration Board head Mikael Ribbenvik could order her case reopened, but Aideen is now relying on a power much greater than the Swedish government – the power of Jesus Christ.
“I think about that dream I had in Iran, about Jesus and I still think, he is watching me…he will help me,” Aideen said.
Meanwhile, Aideen’s attorney says he will try for another hearing, but there’s no guarantee her case will be heard.