Lebanon (MNN) — If you were praying for Nihad Hassan, a Syrian Kurdish pastor arrested in late July, there’s good news.

“Pastor Nihad is safely back in Lebanon,” Pierre Houssney of Horizons International says.

“Our team had a big celebration in the Kurdish Church to welcome him back.”

Social media leads to arrest

In Lebanon, Hassan currently “serves as the director of our Kurdish ministries and pastors a church that we planted,” Houssney says.

Originally from Afrin, Syria, Pastor Nihad Hassan became a Christian in 2008 and has since played a crucial role in reaching Muslims in several countries.
(Photo, caption courtesy Horizons International)

As described here, police arrested the pastor during a recent visit to northern Syria.

“We sent Pastor Nihad and his wife and two kids up on an exploratory trip to look into planting a church, because we have a lot of Kurdish Muslim background believers who had come to Christ in Lebanon, and they gradually had been moving back to Syria,” Houssney explains.

Soon after Hassan arrived in Syria, accusers used old social media posts – taken out of context – to report him to the authorities.

Houssney says, “Nihad was speaking out against genocidal massacres against the Kurds, but it was made to look as if he was opposing Muslims and the government in general.”

Thankfully, Hassan spent only a week in jail. “He was able to get a good lawyer,” Houssney says.

“We went through all channels that we could, including the Evangelical High Council in Lebanon and Syria, contacting different people to get him free.”

Family copes with trauma

Pray for Hassan’s family in the aftermath. The experience left his children suffering from severe separation anxiety.

“His main concern, when I was talking to him, is that his kids are traumatized,” Houssney says.

“Every time he leaves the house now, his daughter says, ‘Daddy, don’t go to the police!’ and his son was not eating well for the first few days after he came back, just from the trauma.”

Learn more about Horizons’ Kurdish church ministry in Lebanon here.

 

Header image depicts Pastor Nihad Hassan at the Syrian Kurdish church in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo courtesy Horizons International.