Iranian authorities abandoned preliminary hearings against Christian convert Hamid Pourmand before an Islamic sharia court in Tehran last week, apparently after news of his trial leaked out to the international press.

Less than two weeks after secretive court proceedings began against the Protestant lay pastor, officials informed his lawyer and family that he was to be moved from Tehran's Evin Prison to his home city of Bandar-i Bushehr to stand trial for his life.

No indication was given as to when Pourmand would be transferred to one of several prisons in the southern port city.

Nor did officials specify when he would actually go on trial, facing the death penalty under the Islamic regime's laws forbidding apostasy and proselytizing.

Pourmand, 47, was arrested by the Iranian security police last September for deserting Islam 25 years ago to become a Christian. A former colonel in the Iranian army, he was serving as lay pastor of an Assemblies of God congregation in Bandar-i Bushehr.

After five months in solitary confinement, he was convicted by a military court martial in mid February for "deceiving the Iranian armed forces" about his conversion; he was sentenced to three years in prison. Judges at the military tribunal declared the written evidence that his army superiors knew about his Christian faith to be "falsified documents."

Iran's Islamic law statutes forbid a non-Muslim to hold any position of authority over Muslims.