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Rights group accuses Israeli post office of opening God's mail

JERUSALEM (AFP) - An Israeli human rights group accused the national postal authority of violation of privacy for having published letters addressed to God on its web site.

Letters without a postal address are generally returned to the sender but those addressed to God are often taken by a postal official to Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism and where worshippers traditionally deposit prayers.

"It's a violation of basic privacy laws, whether the senders sincerely thought the letters would reach their destinations or not," Yoav Loeff, spokesman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), told AFP.

A postal authority spokesman told AFP that the excerpts published on its Internet site were some 15 years old.

No decision to remove the letters posted on the web has yet been made, despite the risk of drawing greater wrath than that of rights groups or angry senders: once it is sent, a letter legally belongs to its intended recipient.

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