I reckon they should hand Kember and the other two hostages back.
Released hostages 'refuse to help their rescuers'
Telegraph
25/03/2006
The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages. Neither the men nor the Canadian group that sent them to Iraq have thanked the people who saved them in any of their public statements.
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Previous hostages have been questioned on everything from what shoes their kidnappers wore to the number of mobile phones they had. The pacifist Christian Peacemaker Teams with which the men were visiting Iraq is opposed to the coalition's presence and has accused it of illegally detaining thousands of Iraqis.
Jan Benvie, 51, an Edinburgh teacher who is due to go to Iraq with the organisation this summer, said: "We make clear that if we are kidnapped we do not want there to be force or any form of violence used to release us."
Although the CPTs has welcomed the men's release, it has not thanked the rescuers in any of its statements. It blamed the kidnapping on the presence of foreign troops in the country, which was "responsible for so much pain and suffering in Iraq today".
3 comments:
Update:
Freed Kember thanks rescue troops
Must be very galling for a peace activist to be rescued by the SAS. Still think they should give him back, though.
Kember's muted thanks fuels SAS rescue row
The Sunday Times
March 26, 2006
THE freed British hostage Norman Kember arrived back on British soil yesterday and tried to defuse a growing row over his response to the SAS mission that rescued him. Speaking at Heathrow airport after being reunited with his wife Pat, the retired professor issued a statement to address criticism that he had failed to thank his rescuers. “I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue,” he said.
Kember was responding to remarks by General Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the general staff, who had suggested he had failed to express his gratitude to the troops who risked their lives to rescue him and two other hostages after four months in captivity. ... But the brevity of his tribute to his rescuers fuelled the row over the attitude of his group, the pacifist Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), to the rescue mission. Sources close to the SAS unit said the peace activists who had sponsored his visit to Iraq repeatedly failed to co-operate with special forces trying to locate and rescue him.
They said yesterday that after Kember, 74, was kidnapped last November, the CPT in Iraq declined to provide them with information that could have helped them to find him. Well-placed sources said members of the Canadian group in Baghdad failed to provide the SAS with Kember’s mobile phone number. Cell site analysis could have helped rescuers to trace his last movements. Doug Pritchard, co-director of the CPT worldwide, said the group had refused to meet any of the military rescue team, preferring to deal with diplomats.
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Kember was freed last Thursday after 50 soldiers, led by the SAS, stormed a building on the outskirts of western Baghdad. Two Canadians, Harmeet Sooden, 33, and Jim Loney, 41, were also rescued. The body of Tom Fox, 54, an American who was taken hostage with them, was found in Baghdad earlier this month. He had been shot.
A more in-depth look at the Kember story.
I would highlight as particularly noteworthy (i) Kember's bath obsession, and (ii) the CPT's conspiracist accusation that the US military was involved in the bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra.
Focus: Getting in the way
The Sunday Times
March 26, 2006
Yesterday, when Kember arrived at Heathrow, he said that while he did not believe that lasting peace could be achieved by armed force, he thanked those who had played a part in his rescue. His local Baptist church also thanked the British government for securing the release of the hostages without loss of life. The SAS is trained to kill kidnappers while freeing their victims. On this occasion the hostage takers seemed to have vanished before the troops arrived.
British officials deny there was any deal, though it emerged yesterday that the Kember family had asked the Foreign Office that nobody should be killed to secure his freedom.
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Kember had a collection of more than 300 photographs of old baths found in fields and on beaches, and had the locations marked on a map with bath-shaped stickers. “There’s just something about them I like,” he said once. “I describe myself as president and sole member of the Bath Spotting Society.”
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The CPT aims to reduce violence “by getting in the way” — a play on words meaning both following the way of Christ and standing in the firing line. It has 150 part-time volunteers who roam the world’s trouble spots, providing “support to persons committed to faith-based nonviolent alternatives” to conflict. Many volunteers, who travel at their own expense, are retirees.
In Colombia, two CPT activists were arrested four years ago after trying to move the body of an alleged rebel leader through a checkpoint. In Israel, CPT has been caught up in several violent incidents. Two of its members were seriously injured when they escorted Palestinian children to school. In Iraq, a volunteer died in a car accident.
It describes itself as a neutral peacemaker, but a posting on its website this month controversially implied that the US military was involved in the bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra. “We learnt that the US military and Iraqi police were seen at the shrine the night before it was bombed,” claimed a CPT member in Iraq. “The next morning, two shrine guards were found alive but handcuffed inside.”
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British diplomats and military authorities cannot ignore a citizen in peril. So a huge and expensive rescue operation swung into action.
Resposibility for the hunt for the hostages lay with the 250-strong Coalition Joint Special Forces Task Force, which is commanded by a US special forces colonel with an SAS major as his deputy. Its operators began to question Iraqi detainees and to sift intelligence for clues to the hostages’ whereabouts. According to a source close to the SAS in Iraq, they got little or no help from CPT, which declined even to give the SAS Kember’s mobile phone number and other details.
Tensions flared as it became difficult to agree on terms for meetings even with the diplomats: the CPT volunteers were reluctant to enter the green zone lest they be seen as collaborators and they refused to allow diplomats with armed military escorts to visit them outside the zone.
The kidnappers, who called themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, a previously unknown group, were led by Islamic extremists who demanded the release of all prisoners in Iraq; but other members appear to have been criminals who were simply out to make money.
Two of the kidnappers spoke a little English. The hostages “weren’t abused but they weren’t treated well either”, said Maxine Nash, a member of CPT in Iraq who met the three after their rescue. “They said one of the big factors was boredom. You are sitting for day after day on end without anything to do.”
On February 12 their predicament took a sinister twist. Fox was taken away and the other three never saw him again. His body was found two weeks ago in a rubbish-strewn street in Baghdad. He had been shot, although apparently not executed. He may have tried to escape.
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There is as yet no reliable account of how the hostages were located, but in the early hours of Thursday morning, US army special forces cordoned off the area and an anti-terrorist SAS team burst in, lobbing in stun grenades and sweeping every room for terrorists. They found nobody but the hostages.
It was reported yesterday that the Canadians were reluctant to leave with the rescue team, objecting to association with the military. Reaction to the rescue was mixed. Jan Benvie, a 51-year-old teacher and CPT campaigner from Edinburgh, said: “I personally would prefer that no military personnel had been used, if I was being held hostage.”
“The CPT has good intentions and goes there to help other people, but local people are sceptical,” said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain. “Iraqis have doubts about them. It is being questioned what good has come out of these visits.”
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