There are reports in Iran indicating that 9 Bahais in the city of Shiraz in central Iran have ‎been threatened with their life, and in one case attempts were made to put one person on ‎fire. Followers of the Bahai faith in Iran have been under persecution since the victory of ‎the Islamic revolution in 1979, and officials call the leaders of the faith to be foreign ‎agents.‎

According to a report, on March 17, 2008, members of a group that calls itself The ‎Unknown Soldiers of Imam Zaman (the 12th Shiite Imam believed to be in occultation) ‎sent threatening letters to 9 Bahai citizens asserting that they would face “revolutionary ‎executions.” The letter calls the victims “spies of Israel” and says their death would be ‎‎“another page in the golden book of the Islamic revolution.”‎

This report further said that on March 19, unidentified individuals poured gasoline on a ‎Bahai resident of Shiraz and tried to set him on fire. They failed and fled the scene when ‎they were met with resistance. The incident has been reported to the local officials and ‎police.‎

According to the attorney general and revolutionary prosecutor of Shiraz cleric Jaber ‎Baneshi there are at least three Bahai Iranians currently behind bars in the city. In an ‎interview that Baneshi gave over a month ago he said that these individuals had been ‎charged with creating illegal groups and deceit under the guise of non-government ‎groups. They were also charged with propaganda against the Islamic republic of Iran and ‎he denounced the “claims of foreign media that these individuals had been detained ‎because of their beliefs or religious leanings.” But he went further and threatened others ‎who share the beliefs of the detainees and said, “actions against security is the red line of ‎the state and so anybody who tries to cross it and take a step against national security will ‎be dealt with, regardless of his beliefs.”‎

A Bahai resident of the city who had been threatened detailed the incident in a letter to ‎the Intelligence bureau of Fars province. In the letter, the individual explained that he ‎received a threatening letter on March 17, 2008 by a group that called itself the Unknown ‎Soldiers of Imam Zaman. According to the letter, two days later he was assaulted by two ‎individuals. “One of the men pressed me against himself from the back while holding his ‎hand against my mouth. Another person then approached us and together they took me to ‎a tree nearby and tied me to it using a chain and a lock. Then they poured gasoline all ‎over me and one of the individuals then quickly walked away towards a parked car. The ‎other individual struck a match and threw it at me. The match did not catch fire and so he ‎tried another match which ignited but went off immediately. The third match hit my ‎clothes but this one too went out. The fourth match stayed lit and fell in front of my feet ‎and I put it out by stepping on it. The person near me then quickly ran towards the car, ‎got into it and they drove off.”‎

The letter that was submitted to the authorities was accompanied with the threatening ‎letter that the victim had received. The threatening letter in part read, “based on ‎conducted investigations by the unknown soldiers of Imam Zaman … you and eight other ‎corrupt individuals have been sentenced to revolutionary execution and this sentence will ‎be publicly executed shortly.”‎