White House wakes up to the plight of Pastor Saeed Abedini in Iran

At long last, the White House has demanded that Iran release US citizen  Saeed Abedini, a convert to Christianity at age 20 who went on to become a pastor,  held in Iranian prison from last summer.  Why did it take them this long?  And, what measures will be taken if the pastor is not immediately released and instead sentenced to an additional prison term or worse still gets the death penalty?

From WorldWatchMonitor:
Stepping up the urgency of American response, the White House on Friday called on Iran to release a jailed American pastor facing a trial that could send him to the gallows.

Saeed Abedini, a native of Iran and a naturalized American citizen, is expected to enter one of Iran's revolutionary courts Monday to face accusations that he is a threat to national security. His lawyers say he faces a lengthy prison term and even the death penalty at the hands of one of Iran's most notoriously severe judges.

Abedini's supporters in the United States say he was in Iran last summer to complete construction of an orphanage when members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard snatched him off a bus, confiscated his passports, and threw him in prison. Since then, they say, the pastor has been subjected to solitary confinement and beatings.

It wasn't until last week that Abedini's attorney in Iran got access to his case file and discovered his client would be brought into court as soon as Jan. 21, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an advisory panel to the administration and Congress.

Iran's Revolutionary Court is not exactly transparent, so it's not known what precise charges Abedini will face, said Tiffany Barrans, international legal director for the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney group that uses litigation to press for religious and speech freedom. But Barrans said it was Abedini's background as an organizer of house churches in Iran that has angered the government, and for which he will be tried. Christianity, she said, is regarded in official Iranian circles as a security threat because it can entice young people away from Islam, which is Iran's official religion....