Usefulness At End
The Anglican priest who lived and operated in Baghdad, trying to effect reconciliation between factions there, hung around some pretty nasty people, heard stuff, and apparently was passing it on. No more.
He’s had to flee Baghdad after news reports emerged of his cooperation with British intelligence before and after the failed Glasgow and London fire-bombing attacks.
Canon Andrew White, a British national who ran Iraq’s only Anglican church, left the country Tuesday and returned to Britain, the associate said on condition of anonymity, saying the British Foreign Office had asked that it be the only source of information on the case.
The associate refused to elaborate on the threats. But the BBC Web site said pamphlets dropped in Shiite areas of Baghdad branded the vicar as “no more than a spy.”
Canon White had been working to secure the release of five British hostages who were seized at the Iraqi Finance Ministry on May 29 by gunmen wearing police uniforms.
On July 4, Canon White told The Associated Press that he had met the man in Amman, Jordan last April who was identified by religious leaders as an al-Qaida leader. The man told him “Those who cure you will kill you.”
Sounds like he should have kept his mouth shut. The Associated Press had a telephone conversation with him. Unfortunately, the report doesn’t say whether AP called him or he called AP, and whether someone else told AP about this. Blowing it. But it’s a fascinating tale. Might as well just read and enjoy now, because it’s over:
Canon Andrew White, a senior Anglican priest who works in Baghdad, said he met the man privately with a translator and a sheik after holding talks with Sunni Muslim tribal and religious leaders April 18 in the Jordanian capital, Amman. He meets regularly with extremists in an attempt to calm Iraq’s sectarian violence.
He said religious leaders told him the man was an al-Qaida leader who traveled from Syria to the meeting. The man, an educated Iraqi in his 40s dressed in Western clothes, 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.’ “
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:58 am Comments (2) on Thursday, July 12, 2007
2 Responses to “Usefulness At End”
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July 12th, 2007 at 10:19 am
The only surprising thing here is that the priest was actually working with Her Majesty’s Government. The Anglican Church these days is so chock full of seditious leftists that it would be more likely that our vicar would be working more closely with AQ than MI-6.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:48 am
AQ and the rest speak very clearly about their plans and goals. They know that there are few who listen, even fewer who hear, and fewer still who take them seriously.