The U.S. Department of State has issued the following statement about the recent arrests:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom today called for strong international condemnation of the arrest of Baha’i leaders in Iran.

On May 14, Iranian intelligence officials arrested six Baha’i leaders and took them to the notorious Evin prison. The imprisonments are ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Baha’i leaders were summarily rounded up and subsequently executed.

CAIRO, 29 January 2008 (BWNS)--In a victory for religious freedom, a lower administrative court here today ruled in favor of two lawsuits that sought to resolve the government's contradictory policy on religious affiliation and identification papers.

Sahba Rohani, 30, a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn, recently went to Istanbul, Turkey, to be with more than 30 relatives, who, like her, belong to the Baha'i Faith.

Kit Bigelow, director of the National Spiritual Assembly's Office of External Affairs in Washington, DC, speaks about the significance of the Baha'i community in Egypt.  Though not numerically large, the community is one of the oldest in the world, formed in the late 19th century during the lifetime of Baha'u'llah.  In the 1920s, in a landmark ruling, a Sunni court in Egypt in a ruled that the Baha'i Faith is an independent religion and not part of Islam, but still the Baha'is in Egypt continue to face various forms of repression (11 minutes).

In a letter to Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's ambassador to the United States, U.S. representatives Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) express disappointment at a recent decision by the Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court to deny Baha'is the right to document their religion on official documents.

HAIFA, Israel, 26 December 2006 (BWNS) -- The Universal House of Justice, the highest governing body of the Baha'i Faith, has addressed a message to the Baha'is of Egypt in the wake of a 16 December Supreme Administrative Court decision in Cairo that upheld a discriminatory government policy regarding the Baha'is and their identification cards.

CAIRO, 16 December (BWNS)-- In a closely watched case that has become the focus of a national debate on religious freedom, Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court today ruled against the right of Baha'is to be properly identified on government documents.