This was tough to find, but I’m a friend of a friend to the three guys and I don’t want this story to disappear:
ANKARA, Turkey Apr 22, 2007 (AP)— A court jailed five suspects Sunday on murder charges linked to the killings of three Christians who were tied up and had their throats slit at a publishing house which had drawn protests by nationalists for distributing Bibles.
Six others were released pending trial, the court said. It was unclear what charges the six faced and a trial date has not yet been set. A 12th suspect, who tried to escape from police by jumping from a fourth-floor balcony at the scene of the killings, remains hospitalized in stable condition and was expected to be charged later.
The three victims a German man and two Turks who converted to Christianity were killed Wednesday at a Christian publishing house in Malatya.
The attack added to concerns in Europe about whether the predominantly Muslim country which is bidding for European Union membership can protect its religious minorities.
Christians make up just a fraction of 1 percent of Turkey’s population of 71 million.
Christian leaders said they are worried that nationalists were stoking hostilities against non-Turks and non-Muslims by exploiting growing uncertainty over Turkey’s place in the world.
The uncertainty and growing suspicion against foreigners has been driven by the faltering EU bid, a resilient Kurdish separatist movement and by increasingly vocal Islamists who see themselves and Turkey as locked in battle with a hostile Christian West.
People that I talk to about this respond that it’s what to expect from organized religion. Crusades, witch trials, and all that. But I know that there have been murders where the criminal had no religion. Conversations that I have had recently share a theme: people boycott religion because it has been used for evil.
But if I searched the Internet, I might find the cause for the war in Iraq as being a fight over oil and petrol. Those same people who so quickly boycott religion are reluctant to give up driving a car.
Ideologies of convenience are just as dangerous to the world.
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