Tuesday, November 08, 2005

the plight of iraqi christians

One 43-year-old Christian man, married with three children, "was killed last week because he didn't pay," said Dominican Father Mekhail Nageeb of Nineveh, near Mosul. He spoke in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service Nov. 2.

After a group of unidentified men went to the man's workplace to extract money from him, "he tried not to pay and he ran out, so they killed him," said the Iraqi-born priest, who is the Dominicans' superior in Mosul.

Father Nageeb said he knows about "more than 10 or 15 people" in Mosul who have been forced to pay exorbitant sums of money to anonymous groups who have threatened to kill the victim or abduct family members.

The amount of money terrorists demand from an individual can run anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000, he said, forcing many to sell their homes, furnishings, properties or beg relatives or neighbors for cash. Others, he said, simply flee Iraq for a brief period in the hopes of escaping the threats.

"It's a really catastrophic problem now," he said.

Read the whole thing here. From A Conservative Blog for Peace.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this is heartbreaking ... there are so many Christians around the world being persecuted for their faith ... so many in so many different global regions that it is hard to know where to be helpful, if indeed it is possible for us to be helpful, other than through prayer.