Hakop Gochumyan was arrested on 15 August 2023 by the authorities in Pardis, while his family was having dinner at a friend’s home. The authorities confiscated religious material during the arrest. In February 2024, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “engaging in deviant proselytising activity that contradicts the sacred law of Islam” through alleged membership and leadership of “a network of evangelical Christianity.”

In June 2024, he was informed that the Iranian judicial authorities had rejected his appeal, and in May 2025, he published a letter about his treatment while in detention, which includes psychological torture and death threats to his family.