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This very brother, Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali's chief accomplice, in a written confession signed, sealed and published by him, on the occasion of his reconciliation with Abdu'l- Baha, has borne testimony to the wicked plots that had been devised. "What I have heard from others," wrote Mirza Badi'u'llah, "I will ignore. I will only recount what I have seen with my own eyes, and heard from his (Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali) lips." "It was arranged by him (Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali)," he, then, proceeds to relate, "to dispatch Mirza Majdi'd- Din with a gift and a letter written in Persian to Nazim Pasha, the Vali (governor) of Damascus, and to seek his assistance.... As he (Mirza Majdi'd- Din) himself informed me in Haifa he did all he could to acquaint him (governor) fully with the construction work on Mt. Carmel, with the comings and goings of the American believers, and with the gatherings held in Akka. The Pasha, in his desire to know all the facts, was extremely kind to him, and assured him of his aid. A few days after Mirza Majdi'd- Din's return a cipher telegram was received from the Sublime Porte, transmitting the Sultan's orders to incarcerate Abdu'l- Baha, myself and the others." "In those days," he, furthermore, in that same document, testifies, "a man who came to Akka from Damascus stated to outsiders that Nazim Pasha had been the cause of the incarceration of Abbas Effendi. The strangest thing of all is this that Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali, after he had been incarcerated, wrote a letter to Nazim Pasha for the purpose of achieving his own deliverance.... The Pasha, however, did not write even a word in answer to either the first or the second letter."
(264:1)
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