:Otago Daily Times;

:Dec 7, 2005;

:GENERAL;

:3

Vigil for Iraq hostages as deadline approaches

By Stu Oldham and NZPA

A vigil will be held at the Dunedin Peace Pole today for a group of four humanitarians, including New Zealander Harmeet Singh Sooden, who have been taken hostage in Iraq and who, their captors say, will be executed tomorrow.

    Veteran peace campaigner Christina Gibb (76), like the hostages a member of Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT), will join supporters outside the Otago Museum at noon to ask that their “worthy lives are spared, and that they are released unharmed”.

    Ms Gibb, an “anxious and afraid” friend and colleague of American hostage Tom Scott, said she and others were devastated that men so devoted to peace in Iraq could be in danger for “such a horrible attempt to make a point”.

    “As we have said before, these men are opponents of the policies that have sent occupiers to Iraq. They were there to help, not to spy,” Ms Gibb, who has protested American foreign policy with Mr Scott in the United States, said.

    Mr Sooden (32), a Canadian who holds permanent residence in New Zealand, Mr Scott, Canadian James Loney and Briton Norman Kember, were abducted in Iraq nine days ago by a group calling itself the Brigade of the Swords of Righteousness.

    Their captors say they will execute them unless Iraqi prisoners held in Iraq and the United States are freed by tomorrow.

    Prime Minister Helen Clark is being briefed daily on Mr Sooden’s plight but says the Canadian Government is taking the lead in attempts to gain his release.

    “We will do whatever we and Canada together judge to be appropriate,” she said yesterday.

    TV3 is still waiting to hear if Arabic television network al-Jazeera has been passed a videotape of Mr Sooden’s mother pleading for his release.

    TV3’s Auckland bureau chief, Keith Slater, said yesterday that he had confirmation that Associated Press Television News, to which al-Jazeera subscribed, had received the video feed.

    But he said he had not heard if it had been passed on to al-Jazeera.