Britain/Iraq: Retired professor Norman Kember - described by a friend as "harmless as a dove" - is a tireless campaigner for peace.
The 74-year-old grandfather, a former medical physicist at a teaching hospital, gave away Christmas presents to the needy when he was a teenager. And for the past decade he and his wife Pat have helped give free food every Sunday to the homeless in central London.
Mr Kember, of northwest London, is a former secretary of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and a trustee of Christian peace organisation the Fellowship for Reconciliation. He is a longstanding member of College Road Baptist Church in Harrow.
He was aware of the risks he was running by visiting Iraq as a "gesture of solidarity" with Christian Peacemaker Teams from a Canada-based international peace group working in the country.
He told Premier Christian Radio in the run-up to his visit: "I hope to meet ordinary Iraqis of various backgrounds - Shias, Sunnis, Christians - and just hear their stories, then come back and talk about it." Asked by interviewer Rob Frost if going to Iraq was brave, he answered: "I don't know, I've done a lot of writing and talking about peacemaking.
"I've demonstrated, you name it I've been on it, but I feel that is what I'd call cheap peacemaking."
Geoffrey Whitfield, of the Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute, who has known him for 50 years, said: "He would know that it was a very frightening situation and he would have the strength to handle that fear." He added: "He is a very meticulous man and he will have thought through all the possibilities of the dangers that he was going to be confronting."
Mr Kember was a distinguished medical physicist at St Bartholomew's Hospital, in London, before his retirement 13 years ago. His medical credentials include two doctorates. - (PA)