“The police were trying to claim, “˜This group doesn’t belong to us and we don’t know where they came from,– Thomas said. “But they were all in uniform and using guns and [police] cars.”
From Compass Direct:
ISTANBUL, January 10 (Compass Direct News) — Sudanese police have denied attacking 800 Christians at a New Year’s Eve service at Khartoum’s Anglican cathedral and injuring six members of the congregation, the church priest said.
Canon Sylvester Thomas of All Saints Cathedral told Compass that officers firing tear gas into the church claimed they were trying to apprehend a man involved in a stabbing.
Church staff registered a case with local police on January 2, but officials have not established who carried out the attack that caused US$7,000 damage, Thomas said.
“The police were trying to claim, “˜This group doesn’t belong to us and we don’t know where they came from,– Thomas said. “But they were all in uniform and using guns and [police] cars.”
A police spokesman in Khartoum contacted by Compass refused to comment on the attack.
Sudanese Vice President Salva Kiir, a southern Christian, publicly called for the church attackers to be punished yesterday in Juba.
Kiir’s comments came in a nationally televised speech when he and northern President Omar Al-Bashir met to commemorate the second anniversary of a peace deal that ended the nation’s 21-year civil war between northern Islamists and southern Christian, Muslim and animist factions.
During the ceremony, broadcast live on Sudan TV, Kiir and Bashir criticized each other openly for blocking implementation of the peace agreement and the sharing of oil revenues.
Beaten with Whips
No government official from the north, where the Islamist regime holds power, has openly commented on the church attack.
The governor of Khartoum has yet to respond to a protest letter from the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) Bishop of Khartoum, the Rt. Rev. Ezekiel Kondo, who was among those attacked on January 1.
In the letter, Bishop Kondo noted that members of the Cathedral had felt threatened by police cars parked outside the cathedral all day prior to the attack. “Most of the officers were of high rank,” the letter said.
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