IRAQ: Vicar flees Baghdad after threats

Canon Andrew White, who ran Iraq's only Anglican church, left Baghdad amid fears for his safety, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported  July 11.
 
The five Britons' abductors reportedly threatened to kill them unless the vicar stopped trying to find them.

The captives, four security guards and a consultant were abducted on May 29, from the finance ministry in Baghdad.

They were seized by insurgents disguised as Iraqi police.

White left Baghdad after pamphlets dropped in Shia areas of the Iraqi capital reportedly branded the vicar as "no more than a spy," the BBC said.
 
An unconfirmed report in London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi said the leaflets accused White of trying to broker deals against the kidnappers.

The vicar, who was based at St George's Memorial Church in Baghdad, arrived in Britain on the morning of July 11.

The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, of which White is executive director, confirmed he had left Iraq because of a "serious security threat."
 
Mohammed Shokat, head of the political section at the British Embassy in Baghdad, told the BBC that White "has left Iraq because of a security threat."

The Times of London and the Associated Press reported July 4 that White had met privately April 18 with an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq with a translator and a sheik after holding talks with Sunni Muslim tribal and religious leaders in the Jordanian capital, Amman. White meets regularly with extremists in an attempt to calm Iraq's sectarian violence.
 
The man, an educated Iraqi in his 40s dressed in Western clothes whom religious leaders told him had traveled from Syria to the meeting, warned of attacks on Britain and the United States, White said.
 
"It was like meeting the devil," he told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "He talked of destroying Britain and the United States and then said, 'Those who cure you are going to kill you.' "

White said he did not understand the threat's significance at the time. He said he passed the general threat along to Britain's Foreign Office but did not mention the comment that could be interpreted as hinting at the involvement of doctors in a terror plot.

Then came the news that six physicians were among the eight suspects detained in the recent failed attacks in Britain.

"As soon as I heard many of the suspects were doctors I remembered those words," he said. "I work with a lot of people who are not necessarily good people. It becomes very difficult to distinguish what threat is real and what is not."

White said he gave the man's identity to the Foreign Office but would not say publicly what it was. He also said he gave the same details to American authorities in Baghdad.