Monday, December 9, 2013

Seizure of Nuns Stokes Syrian Christian Fears.

DAMASCUS,  December 8 (Lee Keath, Associated Press) - Syrian Christians offered prayers Sunday for a group of more than a dozen nuns and orphanage workers held by rebels for nearly a week, fueling fears in the minority community that they are being targeted by extremists among the fighters seeking to oust President Bashar Assad.
The seizure of the 12 Greek Orthodox nuns and at least three other women is the latest attack to spark panic among Syria's Christians over the strength of al-Qaida-linked militants and other Islamic radicals in the nearly 3-year-old revolt against Assad's government.

A priest and two bishops previously kidnapped by rebels remain missing, and extremists are accused of vandalizing churches in areas they have captured. Rebels seized the nuns on Monday from the Greek Orthodox Mar Takla convent when fighters overran Maaloula, a mainly Christian village north of Damascus that lies on a key highway and has changed hands several times in fierce fighting between rebels and government forces.

The group, along with three women - themselves orphans - who work in the convent's orphanage were taken to the nearby rebel-held town of Yabroud. The eldest of the nuns is nearly 90 years old, and the youngest of the orphanage workers is in her mid-teens, according to Mother Superior Febronia Nabhan, head of the Saidnaya Convent.

On Friday, a video was released of the nuns, in which they denied being kidnapped, saying they were in good health and that fighters had taken them to a location away from the combat out of concerns for their safety. The video only stoked the worries of Christians who gathered Sunday for a Mass at the Mariamiya Church in Damascus, the main Greek Orthodox church in the country.

"They're coming after us," Odette Abu Zakham, a 65-year-old woman in the congregation who lives in the nearby historic Christian district of Bab Touma. "All they do is massacre people, all they know is killing."
Another woman at the Mass noted that in the video, the nuns appeared in their black robes but with no signs of religious symbols on them. "They didn't even let them wear their crosses," she said. "This just shows they aren't capable of respecting Christians." "It's been a week. If they're only holding them for their safety, they could have handed them over by now," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation against herself or her family.

Christians and other minorities tend to support the government of Assad, who comes from a Shiite offshoot sect. Syria's Sunni Muslim majority form the backbone of the uprising against Assad. But nationalist fighters among them have been overshadowed by the increasing power of extremists, including Syrian rebels who have taken up hard-line al-Qaida-style ideologies and foreign fighters.

In his sermon at the Mass, the Greek Orthodox patriarch for Antioch and All the East, Yohanna al-Yaziji, asked "anyone with any connection, direct or indirect" to intercede to win the group's return. "We hope this will happen today, not tomorrow. We urge everyone to adhere to the logic of dialogue and peace, not to violence and weapons." He carefully avoided describing the nuns as "kidnapped" or asking for their release - praying only for their "return" - a sign of concerns among Church officials that any statements could enflame the situation.

The rebel faction that released the video, aired on Al-Jazeera television, did not identify itself, and no faction has announced it is holding the group. Syrian opposition activists and Church officials have said the al-Qaida-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, is holding them.

One activist said a Syrian Christian businessman is trying to mediate between the Nusra Front and the government for their release in return for the release of seven Saudi fighters. The activist spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secret mediation, but did not have further details. Greek Orthodox Church officials would not comment.
 ria.ru
9/12/13
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1 comment :

  1. French mother says jihadist ex threatens to take toddler to Syria...

    For more than two months, Meriam Rhaiem was in a state of anguish after her estranged husband abducted their young daughter during a routine weekly outing.

    But late last week, the Frenchwoman’s distress turned to panic when her former partner called to tell her that he was ready to cross the border from Turkey to Syria to join a jihadist group – with the couple’s 20-month-old toddler.

    Rhaiem says she received a call on Friday from her estranged husband, Hamza Mandhouj – a French national of Tunisian origin – informing her that he was ready to cross into Syria from Turkey.

    “He told me clearly that some men will take him to the Syrian border and he will cross the border with them and then the goal is to join the al-Nusra Front,” the 25-year-old mother told a French radio station over the weekend.

    The al-Nusra Front is an al Qaeda-affiliated group that has been designated a terrorist group by the UN and the US. Ever since it announced its existence in early 2012, the Salafist group has been attracting a number of foreign fighters.

    Families on the jihadist home front in Syria

    But it’s not just radicalised adult males who have been responding to the call to join jihadist groups battling forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In recent months, there have been several reports of families travelling to Syria to form a sort of home front for the cause.

    Video clips posted on the Internet have featured interviews with European Muslim women – along with their children – joining their husbands in Syria. In July, a UK news channel broadcast a report of a British woman who travelled to Syria to meet and marry a Swedish national who was fighting with rebel groups in Syria’s Aleppo province, where the couple had a child. In October, the hardline ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) posted a video of around 150 Kazakh nationals said to be from the same family – including children and women – who had come to Syria to “fulfill their Islamic duties”.

    Experts believe an increasing number of families are going to Syria to provide a support base for the foreign fighters. While the men fight on the battlefront, the women maintain the home front, feeding and looking after the fighters while indoctrinating their children in a jihadist ideology.

    Given the security situation and the clandestine nature of such border crossings, estimates of the number of foreign fighters and their families in Syria are hard to arrive at. The Hague-based International Center for Counter-Terrorism estimates that between 1,100 to 1,700 Europeans have gone to fight in Syria since the conflict began in 2011. A substantial number are believed to hail from France, which is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population.

    Radicalised after a trip to Mecca

    In Rhaiem’s case, she claims she regularly received calls from her estranged husband in Turkey asking her to join him – despite the fact that the couple had been separated for over a year.

    Married in September 2011 in the southern French city of Lyon, the couple separated in July 2012, when Rhaiem and her baby moved in with her parents in the eastern French city of Ain.

    According to the attractive 25-year-old Frenchwoman, her husband got radicalised “after a trip to Mecca” and started demanding that she wear the veil, and prohibiting her from listening to music with their child, or even allowing the little girl to play with a doll...............http://www.france24.com/en/20131223-france-syria-foreign-fighters-jihad-family-child-qaeda/
    23/12/13

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