Church elder Monday, December 4, only hours before another Iraqi clergyman was grabbed off the streets of Baghdad, a Christian news agency reported.
Compass Direct News, which investigates religious persecution said 69-year-old Elder Munthir,
had been kidnapped after leading worship services at the National Evangelical Presbyterian
Church in Mosul on November 26. His body was found four days later.
He is the second Iraqi Christian clergyman to be murdered in Mosul within the past two months. Church leaders say there has been mounting terrorist threats targeting Mosul’s Christian community.
Compass Direct News quoted eyewitnesses as saying that the Protestant church elder was cornered by two cars in front of his home as he returned from Sunday worship. "One of the passengers had a pistol, and we saw them taking him and putting him into the trunk of the car," one Christian reportedly said on condition of anonimity.
ONE MILIION RANSOM
The captors contacted Elder Munthir’s family later that day, using his mobile telephone to confirm that they had kidnapped him. The kidnappers reportedly demanded $1 million in ransom and negotiated over the next three days with their captive’s relatives and friends.
They later made clear the kidnapping was in response to Pope Benedict XVI recent comments about Islam. Speaking in Germany in September the pontiff questioned the concept of holy war, sparking wide spread comdemnation from Muslims around the world.
"They said, ‘We have him, and we will kill him. We will cut his throat. We will take revenge for the Pope’s words. We will take revenge on all of you. We will kill all the Christians, and we will start with him," a Christian close to the negotations with the kidnappers reportedly said.
The source said the kidnappers were "aggressive and mean," but that “the people in these extreme Islamist groups do not represent true Islam." Although the kidnappers told a negotiator on Wednesday afternoon that the elder’s safe return was "nearly solved," they then cut off communication with anyone.
BODY DISCOVERED
On November 30 the elder’s body was discovered thrown on a street in Mosul, killed by a single bullet to his head. Local forensic experts estimated the time of his death at 7 p.m. Wednesday evening November 29.
Since 1974, Elder Munthir had served in various ministries of the Presbyterian Church in Iraq, which named him an elder in 2000. He was the sixth generation of his family to serve in Mosul’s Presbyterian Church, established in 1840 by 10 local Christian families. Two months ago, he had been threatened by telephone that if he went to his church again he would be killed, local sources said.
Mosul Christians said friends felt it was too dangerous to attend his funeral for fear of revenge attacks. Meanwhile in Baghdad, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate confirmed that another clergyman – Father Samy Abdulahad – was kidnapped Monday, December 4 from his car as he left his church in the Al-Sinaa district of the capital, near the University of Technology. "It’s terrible," Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako said from Kirkuk. "Babel Seminary was supposed to open this week, but the theological school had delayed its fall opening for several months due to Baghdad’s rising violence.
Church leaders have expressed about a growing number of causulties among Christians in Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi civilians are believed to have died last month alone. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Iraq).
