Dear Dr Hammond:

I am responding to your letter of June 14, 2001.

I must decline your offer to visit Sudan with you personally. There is but one reason why I would not go. It is the question of your creditability. You say in your letter, “many are abusing the issues in Sudan, especially slavery, in corrupt and disgraceful fund raising Scams.”

Your father-in-law, himself a Mail-order Missionary, debated against me in Phoenix on Saturday, June 23, 2001. The subject was “Slavery in Sudan.” While he professed experience in Sudan, he claimed he did not know if slavery is practiced there. It is on the record. He said, “Only Jesus knows if there is slavery in Sudan.” This is untrue. Slavery, wherever it exists, is a public crime with ongoing, living witnesses. Your own father in law has effectively confirmed what you admit, slavery is non existent in Sudan. Of this statement alone I believe you, because I have known it for five years.

But you (and your father-in-law) have for years consistently promoted the false, misleading and bizarre idea of massive government administered slavery. I have most of your letters for at least 5 years and I have your book, “Faith Under Fire” pages 70-73! You now disavow slavery with a shrug. But you have used it to discredit those whom you call “the enemy” and to build your mission. You were a part of the slavery “scam” even if you never bought a single phony slave in the SPLA?s concocted, catch-and-release slave markets. You have also capitalized on anti-Muslim hysteria generated from the slanderous slave talk. You propagated it freely.

Why would I believe anything you tell me about Muslim persecution, crucifixions, church bombings, forced Islamization and genocide, when I have just learned your years of slave tales are false?

There was a time to tell the truth. Instead you wrote a book with an entire chapter about slavery. I tried to tell you this before you wrote the book. Our messages to you and your father-in-law were ignored. I still have the letters, such a waste.

Sadly, Charles E. Carlson