Iraqi police hunt for kidnapped archbishop
MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi forces fanned out in the northern city of Mosul on Saturday searching for a Chaldean Catholic archbishop kidnapped after a deadly attack that Pope Benedict XVI branded "atrocious".
A special police team tightened security, "especially around the Nur district," said a senior police official in Mosul, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said a special task force has been formed to search for Faraj-Farraj Rahhu, the archbishop of Mosul, he added.
Rahhu was kidnapped by armed men after a shootout in Mosul's eastern Nur district late on Friday. Two bodyguards and his driver were killed.
The Syriac Christian archbishop of Mosul, Baptiste Georges Casmoussa, himself a kidnap victim two years ago, said he had begun negotiating with the kidnappers for his Chaldean counterpart's release.
"We received a telephone call from the kidnappers and have begun negotiations for the release of Monsignor Farraj Rahhu," the Rome-based missionary news agency MISNA reported Casmoussa as saying.
Casmoussa was himself kidnapped in January 2005 and held for a day before being released.
Rahhu, seized while on his way home after holding mass, was the latest in a long line of Christian clerics to be abducted in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003.
At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI condemned the latest kidnapping as an "atrocious act which touches the whole of the Church" in Iraq, and expressed his "bitterness", a statement from the Vatican said.
It also described the kidnapping as a "criminal" and "premeditated act."
In Baghdad, United Nations special representative for Iraq Staffan de Mistura condemned the kidnapping.
"It is appalling that these attacks on communities that have lived peacefully together in north Iraq for centuries, are continuing," said de Mistura.
The UN envoy called on the Iraqi government "to redouble its efforts in the protection of minorities in the country ... and to ensure that those responsible for such crimes are brought to justice."
Mariam, an Iraqi Chaldean Christian living in Baghdad, learnt of the Mosul kidnapping while watching the news on a Christian television network.
"It is terrible that any religious cleric, Muslim or Christian, is kidnapped," she said.
Mariam, who gave just one name to protect her identity, believes that sectarian religious hatred did not play a role in the abduction of Rahhu.
The archbishop "was targeted because of money, not because he was a Christian," she said.
She pointed to the case of Chaldean priest Hani Abdel Ahad, kidnapped in June in Baghdad. Abdel Ahad was released after being held captive a few days -- apparently after a ransom was paid with funds collected from abroad, she said.
The US embassy in Baghdad condemned Rahhu's abduction, but said they did not know who was responsible.
"We deplore and condemn this senseless act of violence, and are deeply concerned about the plight of Christian families and communities who are feeling increasing pressure from violence, insecurity and aggression," said US embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo.
"We will continue to work with the Iraqi government to protect and support the Christian minority and all victims of violence, irrespective of religious affiliation," Nantongo said.
Iraq's Christians, with the Chaldean rite by far the largest community, were said to number as many as 800,000 before the US-led invasion nearly five years ago. The number today is believed to have dropped to half that figure.
Associated with the "Crusader" invaders and regarded as well-off, they are often victims of sectarian cleansing, killings and kidnappings at the hands of both Sunni and Shiite Islamists, as well as criminal gangs.
On January 6 a series of bombs exploded outside churches and a monastery in Mosul, in an apparently coordinated attack that wounded four people and damaged buildings, as Christians celebrated Epiphany.
Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, the 80-year-old patriarch of the Baghdad-based Chaldean Catholic Church, was among 23 clerics the pope elevated to the status of cardinal in November.
