proved when expounding a truth that specifically pinpointed the present, that it was "a dead leader."

Although that is the truth, the judges' panel in Afyon Court stated at the end of its decision, which was also written in the old script, not in the name of justice but out of bigoted love of that dead man and chiefly due to the prosecutor's malice: "Said and his friends called Mustafa Kemal a wrecker of religion and the Sufyan, and they have tried to destroy the people's love for him. That's why we're convicting them."

Could there be a public trial for such a criticism of a person who is dead and gone, even if it were a thousand times stronger. To give such a judgement in a court of justice surely means that there is some other matter at hand.

Although the books of the Risale-i Nur that such people are holding have four times been acquitted, and the present Interior Minister and former Justice Minister have three times ruled for their acquittal and stated that they contain nothing reprehensible, and that with the quashing of the Afyon decision to convict us, they contain nothing constituting an offence, now at the time the whole nation awaits justice, compassion, and service of religion from the Democrat government, to leave the Risale-i Nur to the abitrary whims of the evil-intentioned due to the machinations of the former despots, is grievous treachery towards the Democrat government and destroys the nation's hopes of consolation.

My deputy in Ankara is Mustafa Sungur. He gave the good news in the telegraph he sent on 17.11.1950 that the decision had been taken to return all the parts of the Risale-i Nur to us. So although the just Justice Minister has three times acquitted them and now according to Sungur's letter, orders have been given for their return, Afyon Court is collecting all the slanderous reports and denunciations of sixteen years as well as the records of the Denizli and Eskişehir trials, and with the announcement of the amnesty and the court acquittals, is mixing up those blessed works and those reports and records in order to refute them, and is depositing them all in its store. The affairs of the Risale-i Nur should not be left to the devices of those persons who have deceived us this last three years. I am presenting this most important matter for the attention of the Prime Minister, Minister of Education, and Interior Minister.

S a i d   N u r s i ∗∗∗