Replies

http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s04070026.htm

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net

Saturday, July 10, 2004

EGYPTIAN MILITANT WHO HATED CHRISTIANS KILLED UN ENVOY, VIDEO ALLEGES
News comes as more Christians are attacked in Iraq and Egypt

By: Stefan J. Bos
Special Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (ANS) -- An Egyptian militant with hatred towards Christians, who once played hockey for a top Italian club, was the suicide driver who took a lorry loaded with explosives into the United Nations compound which killed its top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other people last August, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday, July 10.

Its website said it had obtained a video tape which attempts "to glorify several suicide bombers who have died in Iraq over the past year", including Abu Farida al-Masri, described as Egyptian, who had a history of violent attacks.

"On his return from Italy he ran several operations against filthy Egyptian Coptic Christians, who were specializing in removing the virginity of Muslim women," the Guardian quoted the tape as saying.

HEAD OF CHRISTIAN

Abu Farida also was said to have told friends later he had a dream that "God will give me the head of a Christian." "The tape then says that the dream came true with the killing of Mr. de Mello with the use of a lorry containing several tons of explosives, the Guardian reported from Baghdad.

The UN building was full of "agents", it claims, but he was specially targeted because the top UN envoy "had been used like a surgeon's scalpel to cut East Timor from Indonesia and cut up Yugoslavia, and the [UN] wanted to cut Iraq into pieces also."

Human rights organizations have expressed concern about growing Muslim violence towards Christians in especially countries like Iraq and Egypt, where Coptic girls have reportedly been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam.

CHRISTIAN SHOPS ATTACKED

In Iraq, north of the capital Baghdad, insurgents blew up three liquor stores in Baqouba Saturday, July 10, prompting concern Islamic militants may be trying to impose their strict interpretation of Islam there, The Associated Press (AP) quoted witnesses as saying. Liquor stores are often owned by Christians, and several of them have been killed since last year, Assist News Service (ANS) learned.

Insurgents also slashed the throat of a translator working for American forces in Kirkuk, the latest of a series of assaults on professionals supporting the multinational forces here, AP said. The body of Hewah Omar, 28, was reportedly dumped by the side of a river that flows through the middle of the city.

Saturday's blasts killed a passing taxi driver, Dr. Nassir Jawad from Baqouba General Hospital told AP. Elsewhere United States marines came under fire in Ramadi, part of the so-called Sunni Triangle and the site of frequent clashes with coalition forces, the military told AP. Marines counter attacked and at Ramadi's hospital, a child caught in the crossfire moaned in agony, Associated Press Television News showed.

HOSTAGES FATE UNKNOWN

Meanwhile, the fate of a captured Filipino worker and two Bulgarian truck drivers were unknown. President George W. Bush called his Bulgarian counterpart, Georgi Parvanov, but reportedly "offered to assist but refused to negotiate with terrorists."

A Pakistani truck driver who returned home after being held hostage here said Saturday he watched as three fellow captives were beheaded. Amjad Hafeez, 26, said he was taken to a room where two foreigners and an Iraqi were killed with a sword, however Bulgarian officials dismissed reports that the two he saw die were Bulgarians.

Read more on these and other news stories on news agency BosNewsLife at website http://www.bosnewslife.com

Award winning Journalist Stefan J. Bos was born on the 19th of September 1967 in a small home in downtown Amsterdam, in the Netherlands not far from the typewriter of his father, who was (and still is) a Reporter and ghostwriter. Already at a very young age Bos decided to become journalist and finally arrived in Hungary, the same country where his parents had smuggled Bibles during Communism.

Bos has traveled extensively to cover wars and revolutions throughout the region and received the Annual Press Award of Merit from the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his coverage about foreign policy affairs including Hungary's relationship with NATO and the European Union. Stefan J. Bos can be reached at: stefan@bosnewslife.com.

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.