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Documents Indicate Turkey Connection to Bishops' Kidnappers
By Nuri Kino
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Erkan Metin, an Assyrian lawyer who began investigating Turkey's potential connections to Magomed Abdurrahmanov when the government said little about his arrest (photo: World Watch Monitor).
When police arrested Magomed Abdurrahmanov in Turkey about a year ago, word spread quickly that the suspected kidnapper of two prominent Syrian bishops had been caught. The Turkish government, however, said the man they had arrested, and his companions, were nothing to worry about. Officials said they were foreigners with improper documents, and had been deported. They continue to say nothing further about the incident. A document provided to World Watch Monitor, however, provides evidence that Turkey's internal security network already knew Abdurrahmanov was suspected of the April 2013 kidnapping of the two high-profile Christian clerics, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Youhanna Ibrahim, and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi. Their disappearance has shaken the already traumatized and diminishing Chrstian community that remains in Syria amid its brutal civil war, and their fate remains unknown. The document, crafted by the intelligence unit of Turkish foreign office and sent to security agencies across Turkey, says that as early as four days after the kidnappings, "information indicates" that men belonging to Ketibet-



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