SYRIAN'S BOGUS MISSION.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12401, 17 November 1908, Page 3

SYRIAN'S BOGUS MISSION.

A remarkable story of frauds by foreigners upon English, clergymen wa§ told afc Sfeaffdrcl Police Court on September 15, when two natives of Kurdistan, one a priest and the other a deacon, bearing the names of Emmanuel and Nwiya, were charg"ed with obtaining charitable contributions by false pretencesi It appeared that the prisoners, Who wore clerical dress, when begging, produced a letter purporting to be -written by the Archbishop of Kurdistan, and bearing' his seal. They solicited money on behalf of schools and churches in that tHooeSG, and from two clergymen living in the neighbourhood ' of Stafford they obtained the sum of 7s 6d. The donors signed "their names in a book, but the prisoners gave no receipt for the money. They were arrested at Wellington, where they were living Jp fairly good style. Over sixty documents, letters, etc., besides £10 m gold, were found in their possession, i Mr Ahmed Quilliam, the Turkist Vice-Consul at Liverpool, said^ the papers produced included the prisoners' birth certificates -and passports He believed they and others members of their tribe had been travelling the country for a good many years. The Rev. F. N. Heazell, rector oi Hitchin and secretary to the Archbishop's Syrian Mission, acted as interpreter, and also gave evidence. He said the ..prisoners, belonged tc the 'Juli tribe, who made a practice of begging in this" way. 'They' had no authority to collect for tho purposes mentioned, and the whole thing was a bogus system which had beer practised for twenty-five years. He was surprised at the credulity showr by the clergy in England when ap ; plied to by these men, ' and he coulc only think they gave money to th< prisoners with the object of gettinp rid of them. The witness examinee the Archbishop of Kurdistan's letter and pronounced the seal genuine, bui the contents not genuine. Fromth« translation 'he gathered that" it wai the_ work of a clever person, who, h« believed, was somewhere in Mesopo tamia, and was at the back of the whole fraud. The witness statec that he had resided in the country and had seen men- of- prisoners' trib< -leave, and, come back with bags o 'gold collected in various countries They did not use the money fo charitable-purposes," but bought vine yards and fields, and built housei for themselvos with it. The prisoner were sent to prison for ,two months