Ankara : To kill a man of God is Blasphemy
Turkey's deputy minister for religious affairs clarifies: Fr. Santoro's assassin knows nothing of true Islam. A youth is arrested as investigations continue. "Muhammad does not need to be defended above all with violence".
Ankara (AsiaNews) While official investigations into the movements of Fr. Andrea Santoro's assassin continue, Turkey's deputy minister for religious affairs Mehmet Gormez has appeared on national television appealing for calm and for a closer study of the Koran, Islam's sacred writings. The deputy minister maintains that a true follower of Islam would never permit himself to disrespect other human beings or institutions over what he termed as "stupid cartoon strips". Above all, referring to the killing of Fr. Andrea, a true believer would never murder a man of God in the house of God.
Gormez added that the prophet Muhammad does not need our defence, violent or otherwise, and that were he present, he would condemn such actions. Commenting on the assassination of the priest in Trabzon, he underlined that the culprit is a person with little or no knowledge of the Islamic religion: in the Koran Muhammad says that widows, children and men of God, whatever their profession, must be respected and protected.....and never killed in the name of God. This crime, he concluded, is therefore blasphemous and as such must be condemned without pity.
If the deputy minister explicitly denounced violent protest in the name of Muhammad against all that is "Danish", Turkish television is debating the issue, broadcasting interviews with public figures of some note in an attempt to gauge the mood in Turkey at present and were this wave of reaction to the blasphemous cartoons will eventually lead.
Meanwhile there is no further news of the arrest of Fr. Santoro's presumed assassin, following that given by the Turkish news agency, Anadolu.
The Turkish press writes that a broadly circulated identikit, have led local police to a youth who, Saturday last in the company of 4-5 friends entered the church where Fr. Andrea was celebrating mass intent on its' disruption. The group were removed from the premises by the priest. Anadolu press agency reports that at 3.00 am local time, police raided a house in the centre of Trabzon, where they found a sixteen year old high school student in hiding with relatives and in possession of a fire arm. The youth was arrested as a suspect in the case, the pistol has been sent to the near by city of Samsun for ballistic testing.
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