:Otago Daily Times;

:Dec 2, 2005;

:GENERAL;

:3

Hostage-takers have ‘wrong men’

Friends fear for group held in Iraq

By Stu Oldham

Iraqi hostage-takers have kidnapped the wrong men if they want to make a point about the ongoing American-led occupation of their homeland, the Dunedinbased friend of one of the hostages says.

    A previously unknown militant group has kidnapped four members of the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT), including Harmeet Singh Sooden, a Canadian citizen who studied at Auckland University. The group says they are “spies of the occupation”.

    The men — Mr Sooden, American Tom Fox, Canadian James Loney and Briton Norman Kember — were snatched from west Baghdad on Sunday, and their detention was confirmed in a grainy video shown on Al Jazeera television on Tuesday.

    Veteran peace campaigner Christina Gibb (76), a member of CPT and a friend of Mr Fox, yesterday said she feared for the safety of a team that was supposed to be there to perform humanitarian work, before taking news of the Iraqi’s plight back to their communities.

    The Swords of Righteousness Brigade accused the quartet of being spies, but that was “completely and absolutely untrue”, and entirely counterproductive to their professed cause, Ms Gibb said, when contacted.

    “The frustration is that those accusations go totally against what CPT is there to do. Under no circumstances would we ever pass information to any military or to any governments,” Ms Gibb said.

    “In Iraq, as elsewhere, CPT is there to be alongside the Iraqi people, to be able to report on the situation as it actually happens. CPT is there to help, and this is most certainly counterproductive to those aims.”

    Ms Gibb, a Quaker who has worked with CPT in Hebron for three months in each of the past two years, met Mr Fox at a CPT training course at its Chicago base last year. He was a levelheaded and thoughtful man who was likely to handle a highpressure situation, she said.

    Mr Fox was also the only Iraqbased member of the team. Mr Sooden and Mr Kember were part of a delegation led by Mr Loney as a preliminary, twoweek visit before joining CPT, Ms Gibb said.

    They would have lived outside the militarily-protected zone to be closer to the ordinary Iraqis they were trying to help, she said.

    As one of the last groups performing humanitarian work in the country, they would also have travelled without weapons, and with notes explaining they were not there to convert anyone to Christianity.

    Ms Gibb had been in contact with Mr Sooden months before he left for Iraq, and it was dreadful that someone “so passionate about helping the Iraqi people” and ultimately seeing an end to conflict in the region had been taken.

    CPT, which is supported by several protestant denominations, had been observing the plight of the Iraqi people “on the ground” since 2002. It was instrumental in exposing the maltreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, and in military and Iraqi government custody, Ms Gibb said.

    “So you can see they have got the wrong people. They are there because they are concerned about the welfare of the Iraqi people and they are strongly opposed to the American and British-led actions. That is all.”

    Ms Gibb, who like other CPT members signs a declaration acknowledging she would be working in a dangerous area, said she was “terrified” of being hurt during her work overseas, but that the latest “dreadful” kidnapping had not affected her resolve.