CHRISTIAN PRIEST KIDNAPPED IN S.EAST TURKEY

Javno.hr
Nov 28 2007
Croatia

They said the priest, 55-year-old Daniel Savci, was from the Mor
Yakup monastery near the town of Midyat and was kidnapped on Wednesday.

A Syriac Christian priest has been kidnapped in southeast Turkey and
police have launched an operation to secure his release, security
officials said on Wednesday.

They said the priest, 55-year-old Daniel Savci, was from the Mor
Yakup monastery near the town of Midyat and was kidnapped on Wednesday.

An official at the monastery said an unknown person had called the
monastery and said they sought a ransom for the priest’s release. CNN
Turk television said the assailants had ambushed the priest in his
car as he travelled to the Mor Yakup church.

Most of Turkey’s 75 million people are Muslim and it has barely 100,000
Christians, mostly of Greek and Armenian origin. The community has
been the target of attacks in the last two years.

Three Christians, two Turks and a German, had their throats slit by
youths who burst into their Bible publishing house in the southeastern
town of Malatya in April.

Turkish Armenian writer Hrant Dink was murdered in Istanbul in January
by a young nationalist gunman and an Italian Catholic priest was
killed in his church by a youth in Trabzon in 2006.