Al-Qaeda fighters kidnap Catholic priest in Syria

Syrian activists said militants affiliated to al-Qaeda kidnapped on Monday a prominent Italian Catholic priest in the eastern city of Rigga. Sources in Rigga, a city under the control of opposition fighters, told Reuters that militants from jihadi groups The Islamic State of Iraq and Ahrar al-Sham kidnapped ?Father Paolo Da Luglio as he was walking in the city. Father Paolo is known for his opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.?  “Father Paolo went to meet the Emir of [jihadi group] the al-Nusra Front in Rigga ?yesterday, but he didn’t find him. He went again today for the same reason but he never returned, ?”? activist Abdel Rahman Matar said. Ghassan Aboud, owner of the opposition Orient satellite television channel where Father Paolo presented a show, said “the attack on the crew of Orient TV continues with kidnapping of Father Paolo, the presenter of the ?show Eqama Moaqata (Temporary Residence).”? The Syrian authorities expelled Father Paolo from the country last year after it became known he was helping victims of ?the Assad regime. The Catholic priest is popular amongst many Syrians, both for supporting the uprising but also for helping to reconstruct the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian (Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi) a Syriac Catholic monastery in north Damascus, in the 1980s.