Hanna had moved to Syria, where he taught religion classes, two years prior with his family. He was back in Iraq on a two-week visit at the time of his murder.
On Saturday (March 15), Ankawa.com reported that a Christian woman from the predominantly Syrian Orthodox village of Bartalla, 15 miles east of Mosul, had been kidnapped. The website said that captors had asked for money in exchange for releasing the mother of five.
According to Fr. Mikhail, a third kidnapping attempt occurred on a young Christian man in Mosul this week. The young man has been hospitalized after his would-be kidnappers shot him when he escaped.
The attacks are part of larger violence and lawlessness that has affected all of Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups. Approximately 4.5 million Iraqis have been uprooted by the war, BBC reported yesterday.
But Rahho’s kidnapping, with ransom demands that the Christian community support jihad against U.S. troops and pay $3 million, was a clear attempt to drive Christians out of Mosul, church leaders said. More than half of Iraq’s Christians, who trace their roots back to Christ’s disciples, are estimated to have fled the country since 2003.
In the last two months several Christian families have left Mosul after armed groups dropped notes by their homes telling them to pay a religious tax or be killed, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday (March 15).
Mikhail said that he and other priests in the Mosul area constantly changed their locations to avoid being targeted.
“They detect us by phone and by car, and we don’t know…” the priest said indicating constant uncertainty.
Christians in the towns around Mosul say they pay large sums of money to Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the provincial capital in exchange for protection, The Christian Science Monitor reported on March 6.
This “tax” supposedly insures the safety of 2,000 university students, daily bused to classes in Mosul, the article said. But last year seven students and a teacher from this group were kidnapped and held for ransom, released only after their families allegedly paid $250,000.
At a mass celebrated in Archbishop Rahho’s memory Monday, Pope Benedict XVI drew parallels between the danger facing Iraq’s Christians and the suffering experienced by Christ’s disciples during his passion.
“These are the days in which we re-live the last moments in Jesus’ earthly life: tragic hours, full of love and fear, especially in the disciples’ souls,” the Pope said, again condemning the violence in Iraq.
But many of Iraq’s faithful are tired of official condemnations, including those by Western leaders and the Iraqi government, that seemingly have no effect on their daily lives.
“Of what importance is it that the Pope condemns kidnapping?” asked one frustrated Assyrian, in a March 14 article written by Assyrian journalist Nuri Kino. “The murderers don’t give a damn what the Christian leader in the west says or believes.”
