{"id":4283,"date":"2006-10-12T12:50:01","date_gmt":"2006-10-12T17:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2006\/10\/12\/orthodox-priest-beheaded\/"},"modified":"2006-10-12T12:50:01","modified_gmt":"2006-10-12T17:50:01","slug":"orthodox-priest-beheaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2006\/10\/orthodox-priest-beheaded\/","title":{"rendered":"Orthodox priest beheaded"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MOSUL, Iraq Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and found beheaded three days later said Thursday that his captors had demanded his church condemn the pope&#8217;s recent comments about Islam and pay a US$350,000 (&euro;280,000) ransom.<\/p>\n<p>More than 500 people attended a memorial service Thursday for father Amer Iskender in the northern city of Mosul after his decapitated body was found Wednesday evening in an industrial area of the city.<\/p>\n<p>Iskender was a priest at the St. Ephrem Orthodox church in Mosul.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He was a good man and we all shed tears for him,&quot; said Eman Saaur, a 45-year-old schoolteacher who said she attended Iskender&#8217;s church regularly. &quot;He was a man of peace.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Relatives, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the unidentified group that seized Iskender on Sunday had demanded a ransom and that his church condemn a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI last month that ignited a wave anger throughout the Muslim world. In a speech at a German university the pope quoted a medieval text that characterized some of the Prophet Muhammad&#8217;s teachings as &quot;evil and inhuman,&quot; declaring Islam was a religion spread by the sword.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/ap\/2006\/10\/12\/africa\/ME_GEN_Iraq_Beheaded_Priest.php\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"article.png\" width=\"76\" height=\"26\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MOSUL, Iraq Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and found beheaded three days later said Thursday that his captors had demanded his church condemn the pope&#8217;s recent comments&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}