November Caribbean Memo 2013
Date: 01-November-2013
From: News Center Publications
Dear Friends,
A French Roman Catholic priest has been kidnapped from a parish
church in a small African town in northern Cameroon.
That’s according to TV5Monde, a French-language television
report and confirmed by Reuters, an English-language wire-service news story.
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon (French:
Republique du Cameroun), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by
six countries including Nigeria to the west and the South Atlantic Ocean.
A Roman Catholic Church official in Paris,
France, provided some detail following the kidnapping of the 42-year-old
priest, Georges Vandenbeusch.
The spokesman said he was able to alert the
French embassy by phone of the attack.
Some 15 gunmen reportedly stormed the
parish church of Nguetchewe, about six miles from the Nigerian border, marched him bare-foot across the village and
later demanded ransom for his return.
Authorities believe a Nigerian
Islamist sect called ‘Boko Haram’ may have been responsible. The group seized a
French family in the same area nine months earlier.
While two-thirds of the nation’s population
is Christian, Islam dominates in the north, where the kidnapping took place.
If you are interested in knowing more about
Islam, we invite
you to read our just published novel, “Al-Maghred, the Barbary
Lion.”
We talk about these matters because we’re interested in telling
a story about the world centered on our interest in the Caribbean and Latin
America and its extension to other parts of the world.
As a result, we
think we’ve done that with the publication of six historical-political novels.
They can be viewed on our WebSite.
To find them,
click News Center Publications after reaching the Web address: ‘natcarnes.com.’
Once there click: Amazon.com.
This
Caribbean Memo and a Memo collection can also be found on the Website by
clicking “Memo.”
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The Editors