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Moslem Visits Church, Drinks Tea, Chats, Sets Church on Fire
From Compass DirectAn apparently deranged young Turk barricaded himself inside the Diyarbakir Evangelical Church in southeast Turkey on July 19, breaking windows and setting fire to curtains, Bibles and cassette tapes until dense smoke finally forced him to surrender to the police. Identified as Medet Arslan, 27, the young man had stopped by the Protestant church that afternoon in Diyarbakir's Lalebey district, where some of the church members offered him tea. As he sat and talked with them, he began to intersperse his conversation with loud quotes of Quranic verses, saying several times that he wanted to become a martyr. Raising his voice, Arslan began shouting against the mistreatment of Muslims in Iraq, declaring he wanted to kill people and vowing to go to America and fight. Quickly one of the church staff left the fireside room where they were sitting and called the police. Moments later the visitor pulled a long butcher knife out from under his coat and chased after a youth who dashed out of the room, managing to hold the door shut until keys were found to lock the man inside. After several more telephone calls, local police arrived a half-hour later. Arslan barricaded the door, and the police proved unable to reason with the him. Cursing loudly, the man began burning up New Testaments, bookshelves, curtains and whatever else he could find in the room. He also smashed and broke out all the windows in the room. A fire truck finally came to the scene, where more than 20 police officers had gathered along with local press, but even hosing down Arslan through the windows failed to dissuade him from his standoff. It was only three hours later, when heavy smoke from burning cassette tapes and CDs filled the room, that the attacker begged to be let out of the room and allowed himself to be led away by the police. "After the smoke cleared a little, we went in to find the fireside room charred and burnt books lying around in the water," American Jerry Mattix told Compass. "The walls were black with soot and the stench stifling." Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-08-11 |
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