WASHINGTON, June 30: Restrictions on religious practice in Iran and Saudi Arabia are among the most severe in the world, a senior State Department official said on Friday.

Ambassador John Hanford, who heads the State Department’s office of religious freedom, said an already poor situation for Iranian Baha’is and Sufi Muslims has deteriorated further.

Testifying before the House International Relations Committee, Mr Hanford said that after the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a year ago, the government-controlled media intensified ‘negative campaigns’ against religious minorities, particularly the Baha’i.

On Saudi Arabia, he said no legal provision providing for or protecting religious freedom exists.

“Muslims who do not conform to the official version of Islam can be subject to discrimination and harassment, and sometimes abuse or imprisonment,” he said.

As for non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia, he said, private worship is permitted but public worship is prohibited.

Mr Hanford listed four Middle East countries where he said religious minorities enjoy a substantial degree of freedom to worship openly: Lebanon, Bahrain, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

In Iraq, he said, conditions for religious minorities were in recent years remarkably similar to those in Iran.

Now, however, Mr Hanford added, it is Iraq’s policy ‘to respect the rights of all religious groups to gather and worship freely, and in practice it does not place or tolerate restrictions on the rights of minority religious groups to practice their faith’. —AP