December 4, 2005

Statement

With immense pain and strong denunciation we received the news of kidnapping four members of the Christian Peacemaking Team ( CPT ) in Iraq by one of the organizations that claims affiliation with resistance organizations.

The ugly kidnapping operation, in addition to being a disapproved aggression on the freedom and human dignity of the human being, has being affected on persons known to us in the fields  of good doing.

These people have a known and commended role in standing by the Palestinian people in their affliction and suffering from subjugation and oppression. They support the Palestinian in facing up to expulsion from their land, destruction of their houses shoveling away of their farms by the occupying Israeli forces. They endanger their life in advocating for noble issues they believe in, just as the Muslim and Christian believe in them.

The Middle East Council of Churches and the International Islamic Forum for Dialogue, as they denounce all kidnapping and aggression operations regardless of the identity of their perpetrators, call on the kidnappers of those innocent good doers to release them immediately so they return to their families and countries. We emphasize that the kidnapping of such people constitutes a flagrant distortion of the aims of the Iraqi struggle against the occupation, a violation of the religious values and a wrong doing against the spirit of human solidarity that this group has expressed towards the central Arab cause represented in the establishment of a Palestinian independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the achievement of independence and peace in Iraq.

The General Secretary of the                   President of the

Middle East Council of Churches             International Islamic Fourm for Dialogue

Guirguis Ibrahim Saleh                           Prof, Dr. Hamid Bin Ahmad AL-Rifaie