Iraq: Three western Christian peace activists kidnapped in Iraq last November were freed yesterday in a joint operation mounted by British, Canadian, US and Iraqi forces.
Briton Norman Kember (74) and Canadians Harmeet Singh Sooden (32) and James Loney (41) are members of the Toronto and Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams which has deployed teams in Iraq since 2002. A fourth man, US citizen Tom Fox (54), was murdered and his body was found in the diplomatic quarter of the capital two weeks ago.
News of the release emerged as a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside the headquarters of the Iraqi police's major crimes unit in Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding 35 in one of the worst attacks on police in recent months. A car bomb targeting a police patrol in a busy market in southwestern Baghdad killed seven people several hours later. Nine Iraqi soldiers were also killed when a suicide bomber hit their patrol near the al-Asad US airbase in western Iraq, interior ministry sources said.
The US military discovered the whereabouts of the hostages on Wednesday while interrogating two detainees. This triggered the operation which, British foreign secretary Jack Straw revealed, had been planned for many weeks. When British special forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police stormed the house in a rural area 30km north of Baghdad, they found the men bound and abandoned.
The kidnappers, who claimed to belong to an unknown group called the Swords of Truth Brigades, had fled. Iraqi Sunni clerics who tried to secure the release of the men came to the conclusion that the abductors may have been criminal elements rather than politically motivated militants.
Douglas Pritchard, a Christian Peacemaker Teams director, expressed satisfaction that no shots were fired during the rescue operation. Before going to Iraq, "peacemakers" sign a declaration stating that, if abducted, they do not want to be freed by force. Mr Pritchard blamed the abductions on the US and Britain. "We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq." He described Mr Kember as a "faithful man, an elder and mentor to many in his 50 years of peacemaking".
A retired medical physicist, Mr Kember had never gone to a conflict zone before travelling to Iraq with the aim of meeting Iraqis, hearing their stories, and returning to Britain to report on the situation.
Mr Pritchard said Mr Loney, a community worker from Toronto, had "cared for the marginalised and oppressed since childhood", while Mr Sooden, an electrical engineer from Montreal, was "a young man newly committed to peacemaking", who has "put his life on the line to promote justice in Iraq and Palestine".
Since the war, Christian Peacemakers have made their mission tracing Iraqi detainees who disappear into prisons operated by the US. The organisation was the first to report on the abuse of Iraqis held in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The ecumenical Peacemakers organisation was founded in 1984 by Menonites, Brethren and Quakers, and has volunteers from other denominations.
Members work in the West Bank city of Hebron, where they try to prevent 400 hardline Israeli settlers planted in the city centre from harassing its 20,000 Palestinian inhabitants. Team members also join Palestinian and Israeli protests against the 700km wall Israel is building in the Occupied Territories. Palestinian activists and clerics joined Iraqis in calling for the release of the kidnapped men.
At least 440 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since the US invasion and 41 have been killed. Seven foreigners remain in the hands of kidnappers, including Jill Carroll, a reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor.
Thousands of Iraqis are being held by militants and criminals. An average of 30 Iraqis are abducted every day, most by organised gangs demanding ransom.