IRAQ. DEATH PENALTY FOR ARCHBISHOP'S KILLING

May 18, 2008: a leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was sentenced to death for the killing of the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho.
The archbishop of the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped in February by gunmen who attacked his car, killing his driver and two bodyguards. His body was found in a shallow grave two weeks later. The Iraqi government said the criminal court imposed the death sentence on Ahmed Ali Ahmed, known as Abu Omar.
In the past, the Iraqi government has been accused by Iraq's Christian minority of not doing enough to protect them from persecution. The archbishop, 65, was the latest in a long line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted in Iraq.
The Chaldeans are the largest sect within Iraq's Christian community. (Sources: BBC, 18/05/2008)