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Title: Kidnapped Iraqi archbishop dead
Source:
BBC
URL Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7294078.stm
Published: Mar 13, 2008
Author: BBC
Post Date: 2008-03-13 11:03:24 by robin
Keywords: None
Views: 89
Comments: 7
Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of the Iraqi city of Mosul, who was kidnapped last month, has been found dead near the city. An Iraqi police officer and morgue official confirmed reports that the archbishop's body had been found buried near Mosul, where he had been abducted. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI was profoundly moved and saddened by Archbishop Rahho's death. He was kidnapped soon after he left Mass in Mosul on 29 February. Shallow grave According to the SIR Catholic news agency, the kidnappers told Iraqi church officials on Wednesday that Archbishop Rahho was very ill and, later on the same day, that he was dead. Church workers went to the area where the kidnappers said he was buried and found his body in a shallow grave. It is not clear whether he was killed, or died of natural causes. Nobody has claimed responsibility for his death. The archbishop, 65, was the latest in a long line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Three people who were with him at the time, a driver and two guards, were killed by gunmen. Appeal Only last Sunday, Pope Benedict had appealed for the archbishop's release. A Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said: "The most absurd and unjustified violence continues to afflict the Iraqi people and in particular the small Christian community, whom the Pope holds in his prayers in this time of deep sadness". "This tragic event underscored once more and with more urgency the duty of all, and in particular of the international community, to bring peace to a country that has been so tormented," he added. The Chaldeans are the largest sect within Iraq's Christian community, which was estimated at 800,000 before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Many have left their homes after attacks linked to the continuing insurgency. Baghdad blast Earlier on Wednesday, a car bomb in the capital Baghdad was reported to have killed at least seven people, and wounded at least 20. According to AP, the bomb was in a parked car in Tahrir Square, a central commercial district just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses much of the Iraqi government and the US embassy. The attack is the latest in a series in Baghdad, following several months of relative calm. Poster Comment: Chaldean archbishop kidnapped in Iraq, police say Christianity has been in Iraq long before Islam was invented. Basically there have been Christians in Iraq as long as Christianity has been around - long before our European/UK/Scandinavian ancestors were Christian. Theirs is a long and complex history. Before the Gulf War in 1991, they numbered about one million, but that figures is now put at about 800,000 and falling. Under Saddam Hussein, in overwhelmingly Muslim Iraq, some Christians rose to the top, notably Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, and the Baathist regime kept a lid on anti-Christian violence. But this started to change after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the US-led occupation of Iraq. There has been a spate of attacks on Christian targets in Mosul, Baghdad and elsewhere in recent months. Many Christians have felt intimidated and left the country. And on Monday, Iraq's most senior Christian clergyman, the Archbishop of Mosul, Basile Georges Casmoussa, was kidnapped. He was released a day later. He had chosen to stay on and tend to his 35,000-strong congregation, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad. Biblical city In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions, many Iraqi Christians, who had lived in relative harmony with their Muslim neighbours for decades, left to join family in the West. The secular government of Saddam Hussein largely suppressed anti-Christian attacks, but it also subjected some communities to its "relocation programmes". For Christians, this was particularly marked in the oil-rich areas, where the authorities tried to create Arab majorities near the strategic oilfields. Christians live in the capital, Baghdad, and are also concentrated in the northern cities of Kirkuk, Irbil and Mosul - once a major Mesopotamian trading hub known as Nineveh in the Bible. Most Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics who are autonomous from Rome but who recognise the Pope's authority. Chaldeans are an ancient people, many of whom still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Monasteries The other significant community are Assyrians, the descendants of the ancient empires of Assyria and Babylonia. After their empires collapsed in the 6th and 7th Centuries BC, the Assyrians scattered across the Middle East. They embraced Christianity in the 1st Century AD, with their Ancient Church of the East believed to be the oldest in Iraq. Assyrians also belong to the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Church, and various Protestant denominations. When Iraq became independent in 1932, the Iraqi military carried out large-scale massacres of the Assyrians in retaliation for their collaboration with Britain, the former colonial power. Their villages were destroyed, and churches and monasteries torn down. In recent years, however, some places of worship were rebuilt. Other ancient Churches include Syrian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic Christians, who fled from massacres in Turkey in the early 20th Century. There are also small Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities, as well as Anglicans and Evangelicals. 
posted 13 days ago by robin
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Christians have inhabited what is modern day Iraq for about 2,000 years, tracing their ancestry to ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding lands. 
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White House Not Releasing Damaging Pentagon Report The report is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion. It is also based on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam’s government who are now in U.S. custody. Others have reached the same conclusion, but no previous study has had access to so much information. Further, this is the first official acknowledgement from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.
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The study, which was due to be released Wednesday, found no “smoking gun” or any evidence of a direct connection between Saddam’s Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist organization.
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