KHARTOUM, Sudan — A Christian widow in north Sudan is agonizing over the kidnapping of her daughter eight months ago by suspected Islamic extremists in Khartoum.
Ikhlas Anglo said her daughter, 15-year-old Hiba Abdelfadil Anglo, went missing while returning from the ministry of education in Khartoum on June 27, 2010. Hiba, a member of Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Khartoum, had gone to the education ministry office to obtain her transcripts for entry to secondary school. Two days later, the family received threatening telephone calls and messages from the kidnappers telling them to pay 1,500 Sudanese pounds ($560) in order to secure her return.
Anglo and others said they believe the kidnappers are Muslim extremists who have targeted them because they are Christians and that police are aiding the criminals. She said when she went to a police station to open a case, police bluntly told her she must first leave Christianity for Islam. “You must convert to Islam if you want your daughter back,” officer Fakhr El-Dean Mustafa of the family and child protection unit told Anglo, she said. Recently transferred to another station, Mustafa was not immediately available for comment. Adding to the anguish of the kidnapped girl’s family was Anglo’s dismissal from her job when she took time off to search for Hiba. Anglo said her supervisor at Asia Health Center, where she had worked for many years as a cleaner, had told her to report back to work after recovering her daughter, but after a month she was surprised to learn that she had been fired as of July 1, 2010.
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