Puissant Mesopotamian Partisans Purloin Papist Pedophile In the Very Acy of Preying

Armed men seize Mosul archbishop


Monday 17 January 2005, 23:37 Makka Time, 20:37 GMT




A group of unidentified armed men in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have seized Syrian Catholic archbishop, Basil George Casmusa, a spokesman for the Vatican said.



The Vatican condemned the late Monday incident as a "terrorist act".

Casmusa, 66, leader of the city's Syrian Catholic community, was seized at around 5pm local time (1400 GMT) as he was about to enter his car, Father Faraj told AFP.

The armed men tossed him into the trunk of their vehicle before speeding away, according to the priest, who follows the rival Chaldean rite.

The Chaldean patriarch in Baghdad, Emmanuel Delly, said Casmusa "was abducted outside his home as he was returning from a pastoral visit in the diocese of Mosul".

"He was abducted and taken off in a car. We don't know who took him, nor the reason why," Delly told the missionary news agency Misna by telephone.

'Terrorist act'


Churches in Iraq came under a
wave of attacks last October

"We gave the news to the Vatican and now we are doing everything possible to trace him and we hope we can save him."

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls said the Holy See "condemns in the firmest manner this terrorist act and demands that Monsignor Casmusa be rapidly returned safe and well to his ministry".

The prelate heads the 35,000-strong Syrian Catholic church in Mosul. All of Iraq's Christian denominations - Assyrian, Syrian, Armenian and Greek - have wings which recognise the supremacy of the Holy See.

Pope John Paul II, who named Casmusa archbishop in 1999, late last year condemned attacks on Catholic churches in Mosul, including an attack on the home of the leader of the Chaldean community - the Catholic breakaway from the Assyrian Church.


Aljazeera + Agencies
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