INTERNATIONAL

Iraqi Pastor Jailed on Murky Charges

In separate case, Christian girl imprisoned for manslaughter may get early release.

By Peter Lamprecht

ISTANBUL, May 30 (Compass Direct News) – An Iraqi pastor jailed on kidnapping charges and held for 30 days in the Kurdish region last month has said the real reason for his arrest was religious.

Writing from Dohuk, 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad, pastor Abdul Kareem Yacob told how Kurdish secret police had arrested, released and then rearrested him before finally allowing his release on bail on April 28.

Yacob’s lawyer, Akram al-Najar, told Compass that though the kidnapping trial is ongoing, he does not believe the court will have any reason to convict his client.

“It’s not mentioned in the court case, but [Yacob] is being targeted because he has activities in the church,” said al-Najar.

“Tell us why we brought you here,” Yacob said secret police asked him during his initial questioning, 48 hours after he had been detained at his Dohuk home on March 30.

Returning from dropping his wife off at work at 9 a.m. that day, Yacob said he had found two men waiting outside his door. They politely informed Yacob, 49, that they were secret police and that he needed to come with them. They offered no further explanation.

The pastor said that he did not think this request was unusual. He had often been called in by the security services because of his status as an evangelical pastor, a tiny minority among both the majority-Muslim population, and among Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox-dominated Christian population.

It was only later, after he had spent 48 hours in a prison cell with no indication of why he had been arrested, that Yacob began to guess at the reasons behind his detention.

“I thought it could be because of preaching the gospel to Muslims and Yezidiz [a religious minority based in northern Iraq],” the pastor said. “Just a few days before I had been arrested, we distributed thousands of [Christian] tracts during Newroz,” the Kurdish new year celebration when families typically picnic in the mountains.

But during Yacob’s initial interrogation on April 1, it became clear that police suspected him of involvement in the kidnapping of a young child. The child’s father, of Assyrian Christian background, worked as a guard at a Christian ministry, and Yacob had visited his home two years prior as part of a program to deliver food to needy families.  

“Do you really say that pastor Kareem offered money to buy your child?” officers asked the missing child’s parents when they were interrogated with Yacob several days later. According to Yacob, the parents said yes.                         

But when Yacob challenged the missing child’s parents over the accusations, he said they backed down and told the officer that he was innocent.

Despite the change of story, Yacob said he spent another 15 days in jail before finally being released on bail on April 17.

But the next day, police again asked Yacob to return to their office – this time, they said, to finish up some paperwork. Upon arrival he found himself transported to a court hearing where the missing child’s uncle testified against him, saying that the young one’s mother had told him Yacob had asked to buy her offspring.

While in custody, Yacob said that the general director of the secret police called him into his office and warned him that there had been complaints against him.

“Priests and other religious men are complaining because [you] preach the gospel to Muslims, Assyrians and Yezidis,” Yacob said the director told him. The pastor said that the director then became angry with him and threatened to destroy his life before ordering that he be returned to his cell.

During a third court hearing on April 23, Yacob said that the missing child’s father actually pleaded with the judge for the pastor’s freedom, saying that he was innocent. Yacob was eventually released again on bail on April 28 and told Compass that he has had no further problems since then.

A member of Yacob’s house church, approximately 20-strong, said that his pastor’s arrest was about more than just the alleged kidnapping.

“They just used the case to stop him evangelizing people,” said the church member. “During the investigation they mentioned things that were not part of the case.”

But another Iraqi pastor from Dohuk told Compass that Yacob’s arrest may have been caused by concerns over Yacob’s security.

Pastor Bahzad Ibrahim Mizory said that prior to Newroz, security forces had specifically asked him not to distribute tracts and boxes of gifts for his own safety, because of the risk of potential terrorist attacks.

“We are near to Mosul, so during Newroz [there was a concern that] the terrorists would try to do car bombs and other attacks,” the pastor said. Mizori said that government officials, assuming that Yacob was connected with his church, had become angry with him when they heard reports that Yacob had been distributing tracts and gifts during the holiday.

Mizory said he was uncertain whether there was a direct link between the tract distribution and the kidnapping charges against Yacob.

 

Hope for 16-Year-Old Asya

Mizory also said that he expected the early release of a Christian teenager from Dohuk jailed for fatally stabbing her uncle in July 2006. Asya Ahmad Muhammad, 16, had stabbed her uncle in self-defense as he was beating her for converting to Christianity and for “shaming” the family by working in public.

According to the pastor, Muhammad will walk free as soon as Kurdish Regional President Massoud Barzani approves the decision.

In February, Muhammad’s father reached a financial settlement with his dead brother’s family by which they agreed to support the young girl’s early release. She had been condemned to serve 3.5 years in prison.

“She is very sad, but she has great hope,” said Mizory, who visited the young girl in prison yesterday. “She gets thousands of letters from all over the world. She keeps some with her and she tries to read the others before giving them to her father to take them home.