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Trial for Jibla Baptist Hospital murders opens with confession
In court Sunday, Yemeni Muslim Abed Abdulrazzak Kamel not only admitted killing three American missionaries December 30. He bragged about it. "I acted out of a religious duty … and in revenge from those who converted Muslims from their religion and made them unbelievers," he said. "I am comfortable [with what I did]."

"Residents have said the American victims never discussed religion," the Associated Press reported, though friends and family say they might have done so privately.

Kamel said he was also angry with "another corruption" at the hospital: women were getting sterilized. "This is a violation of Islam," he said.

But a spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, which the three Americans worked under, told Baptist Press that all sterilizations at the hospital required the written permission of both spouses. It doesn't seem that Kamel, who apparently received treatment from the hospital with his wife, was at all motivated by his experiences there as they sought help with miscarriages. His treatment there simply familiarized him with his victims.

He said he had plotted the attack with Ali al-Jarallah, who is accused of killing a local politician two days before the hospital attack. "We agreed. (Al-Jarallah) would kill seculars, and I would target Christians," he said.

Al-Jarallah's trial also began Sunday. "I had no knowledge that I would stand trial until I arrived here," he told the judge when asked for his response to the murder charges against him. " I prefer to go to the execution square."

Back in the U.S., the brother of victim Kathleen Gariety told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he wanted justice, not vengeance. "We're not going to lie awake at night waiting for vengeance and waiting for his death," said Jerome Gariety Jr. "I certainly don't want to see his death, but I do want him incarcerated for the rest of his life so he can't injure anyone else in the same way. … I certainly hope that the Yemeni government does do the right thing and not let him go. That would be the worst."

That's unlikely to happen. Yemen might be home to a lot of al Qaeda members and sympathizers ("The Saudi-born bin Laden has family ties to Yemen and is believed to have strong support here," says the AP), but the Yemeni government is eager to fight its image as Muslim Terrorist Headquarters. Today the country executed Abdullah Ali al-Nashiri, who had been convicted of killing three nuns from India and the Phillippines in 1998. An unnamed source "close to the investigation" of the Jibla Baptist Hospital murders told the AFP news service that Kamel and al-Nashiri had ties.

Easter services and messages:

• This Easter, expressions of faith getting more ink | This Easter, in what seems to reflect a resurrection of faith in public discourse, reporters are actually asking questions such as, "Do you believe this is an answer to prayer?" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
  
  
• Message of Easter trumps war, other woes | Church leaders say some of today's sermons, but not all, might touch on the winding-down war in Iraq. That event will be eclipsed by the day's bigger and better news for Christians—the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Erie [Pa.] Times-News)
  
  
• Hallelujah! It's a classic | City voices to raise in joyful chorus on Easter morn (New York Daily News)
  
  
• Hallelujah chorus | Church choirs lift their voices in praise, looking to lead others to the Lord (Knoxville News-Sentinel)
  
  

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April (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47