The Rev. Saeed Abedini, who lives in the U.S. with his wife and two young children, was making one of his frequent visits to see his parents and the rest of his family in Iran, his country of origin and where he spent many years as a Christian leader and community organizer developing Iran’s underground home church communities for Christian converts.

On this last trip, the Iranian government pulled him off a bus and said he must face a penalty for his previous work as a Christian leader in Iran.

He is currently awaiting trial at Iran’s notoriously brutal Evin Prison, where he has been incarcerated since late September.

‘When he became a Christian, he became a criminal in his own country. His passion was to reach the people of Iran,’ Naghmeh, his wife, said in an exclusive interview with Fox News.

‘He comes from a very close-knit family, and he loved evangelizing and passing out Bibles on the streets of Tehran. This was his passion,’ she said.

In July, Abedini left his wife and kids to go to Iran to visit family and continue a humanitarian effort he began years ago to build an orphanage.

After a short visit to a nearby country, Abedini was traveling back into Iran to catch his flight back to the U.S. when members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stopped his bus near the Turkey-Iran border and pulled Abedini from the bus, confiscating his passports and subjecting him to intense interrogation, according to his wife.” Read more.

Flashback: Iran: Islamic Republic Refusing Business License For Convert To Christianity, Orders Businesses Not To Employ Christians – “Iranian authorities refuse to allow a young man to start his own company because he converted to Christianity and was previously detained on charges of ‘apostasy’, or ‘abandoning Islam’, Iranian Christians said Saturday, July 14… Iranian Christians said the move is part if a wider government crackdown on non-Islamic minority groups, especially Christian converts, in society. At least dozens of Christians are known to have been detained in the country. Outside prison, government offices are reportedly ordered not to employ Christians and Christians have been deprived from high school or university education, or running their own schools…” Read more.