ERROR: wrong args ( > ) when redirecting output from an init script

While writing a script to help ease maintenance of my Gentoo installation (i.e. the portage tree) I came across the following error when trying to redirect the standard output of stopping/starting the rsync deamon

/etc/init.d/rsyncd stop > /dev/null

..stopping rsyncd..

* ERROR: wrong args ( > )

The line in the script was:

$SUDO /etc/init.d/rsyncd stop $QUIET_REDIRECT

where

$QUIET_REDIRECT="> /dev/null"

Turns out you need to do something like the following:

eval "$SUDO /etc/init.d/rsyncd stop $QUIET_REDIRECT"