Catholic Priest Shot to Death in Turkey

[Behind the Aegis]

By SUZAN FRASER
The Associated Press
Sunday, February 5, 2006; 8:08 PM

ANKARA, Turkey -- A teenage boy shot and killed the Italian Roman Catholic priest of a church in the Black Sea port city of Trabzon on Sunday, shouting "God is great" as he escaped, according to police and witnesses.

Officers were searching for the boy aged around 14 or 15, according to a police official who declined to be identified because of rules that bar Turkish civil servants from speaking to journalists without prior authorization.

Turkish police officers carry the body of Italian Roman Catholic priest Andrea Santaro, 60, who was shot in the chest with a single bullet, hours after a Sunday mass in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, Turkey, Sunday Feb. 5, 2006. His body was found in the courtyard, just outside the door of the 19th Century Santa Maria Church, which was built under Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid to serve Christians visiting Trabzon.

The police official would not say if the attack might be linked to the printing in European newspapers of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which has caused anger in Muslim countries. Earlier Sunday, hundreds of Turks protested in Istanbul against the cartoons.

"Whether the killing is linked to the caricatures will emerge when the culprit has been caught," Trabzon's Gov. Huseyin Yavuzdemir said.

more

[Gullvann]

1. He has been caught, and has admitted to killing the priest

because of the cartoons.

Let me look for a link.

[Gullvann]

2. Here you go... From Reuters.

ANKARA, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Turkish security forces arrested a high school student on Tuesday over the killing of an Italian Catholic priest and Turkish television said the teenager had confessed to a crime which has shocked this Muslim nation.

The student told police he was influenced by cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad, NTV commercial television said. The report could not be immediately confirmed. <snip>

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07462990.htm

[Behind the Aegis]

3. Thanks for the update!

It is appreciated. I hadn't yet seen if he had been apprehended.

[BoneDaddy]

4. This is more of what is coming

Poor priest. I am afraid we will see the one by one picking off of Westerners in Islamic countries.

The straw that broke the camel's back for many in the muslim world was the cartoon portrayal of Muhammed. Perhaps this was intentional, calculated and orchestrated to inflame the Islamic world. Many innocents on both sides will die as a result of this bullshit.