WorldWatchMonitor

Jeff Woodke, the US Christian aid worker who was released from captivity in West Africa last month, has told reporters that that his abductors treated him “brutally and with inhumanity” during the “6 years, 5 months, 5 days and [some] 12 hours” they held him. Woodke had been living and working in the region since 1992 when he was abducted from his home in Abalak, northern Niger, in 2016.

After more than six years in captivity in West Africa, longtime American Christian aid worker Jeff Woodke has been released. His wife, Els Woodke, was told Jeff was “in good condition,” according to a statement on a website campaigning for his release. “She has expressed her profound thanks to the many people in governments and others around the world who have worked so hard to see this result,” the statement said.

A Christian father and son were killed by suspected Islamic State militants in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on 30 August. The two Copts, Salama Moussa Waheeb and his son Hany, were shot dead while working in the fields in Gelbana, 20 kilometers east of the city of El Qantara on the Suez Canal, according to relatives as reported by the Coptic news site Wataninet. Hany, 40, was married with two daughters.

While Pakistan celebrates 75 years of independence, the Christian minority continues to face discrimination, harassment and violence because of their faith. On 8 August, a Catholic man was killed and three teenagers injured when two gunmen on motorbikes opened fire in a Christian colony in the town of Mastung, 45kms south of Quetta, central west Pakistan.

An elderly Coptic Christian and his son who run an off-license shop in Giza, central Egypt, were hospitalized after they were severely injured in an attack. Joseph Israel, 70, was sitting outside his shop in the Omrania district in the early morning of 28 July when a man  approached him and stabbed him multiple times. When Israel’s son, Emil, rushed to help him, he was stabbed too. Both men were rushed to hospital with critical injuries.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has made his first visit to Nigeria to discuss the next steps to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes there, for which there is enough evidence for them to come under the ICC’s jurisdiction.

“I so wish wish I hadn’t pushed him to go that night”…. Widow Mariam Bibi, mother of six at the age of 32, desperately wishes she could turn the clock back. “It was about 10pm on Sunday night and we were preparing for bed, so [my husband] Nadeem didn’t want to go at all. But I asked him to check what they wanted because [his supervisor] was threatening not to give him any more work.” Thirty-eight year old Nadeem had worked as a trash collector for the local Corporation for 16 years.

A Pakistani pastor was killed and another wounded Sunday in an attack outside their church in northwestern Peshawar. The two pastors were leaving the Shaheedan-e- all Saints’ Church where they had led the Sunday morning service when two men on a motorbike drove up to their car. They shot Rev. William Siraj in the head, killing him on the spot. His colleague, Rev. Patrick Naeem, was injured and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Asif Masih recovers from bullet wounds in both thighs, Shera Kot Sep 2021 (Credit: World Watch Monitor) The most senior political leader of Pakistan’s minority Christians has complained of what he calls ‘prejudicial treatment’ by police in the way the force responded to a terrifying gun attack in a mixed faith neighborhood which injured at least seven, one of them critically ill and fighting for her life in hospital. Another victim was a young girl.

Sr. Gloria Argoti meets Pope Francis straight after being freed, after almost 5 years, by Islamists in Mali, Oct 10 2021 (Credit: Vatican Media) After almost 5 years as a captive of an Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in Mali in West Africa, a Colombian nun, Gloria Cecilia Narvaez Argoti, has been freed. She was flown from Bamako, Mali’s capital, direct to Rome where Vatican Media posted photos of her being greeted by the Pope at mass.in St Peter’s Basilica.