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Qatar foreign minister believes abducted bishops still alive

Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah said that he has obtained information that two bishops kidnapped in Syria last year are still alive.
Nuns hold candles during a candle-lit vigil at the Balamand Monastery in Koura, near the north Lebanese city of Tripoli, to call for the release of bishops kidnapped in northern Syria two months ago, June 22, 2013. Greek Orthodox Patriarch John Yazigi led the candle-lit vigil on Saturday for Greek Orthodox archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, appealing to their kidnappers to free them and urging Syrian security forces to do more to win their release. REUTERS/Omar Ibrahim (L
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Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah is reported to have told attendees at a Sept. 4 closed-door meeting in Doha that the information available to him indicated that two Orthodox bishops abducted in Syria in 2013 were still alive, despite rumors sometimes circulating to the contrary. The statement was told to Al-Monitor by a high-ranking official who attended Attiyah's meeting with a Lebanese delegation visiting Qatar to discuss the issue 500 days after the abduction of Bishop Boulos Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church of Aleppo and the Syrian Orthodox archbishop of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim.

The two men were reportedly detained April 22, 2013, in Damascus by gunmen opposed to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Since that time, there have been contradictory reports about the clerics. None of the reporting on their fate or on the identity of their kidnappers has been confirmed.

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