Church in the World

Peacemaker team kidnapped in Baghdad

THE FOUR members of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) kidnapped in Baghdad last Saturday were this week shown in a video which accused them of being ?spies? for the American-led coalition.

The brief tape, aired on the Al-Jazeera news channel, showed four men sitting on the floor as well as footage of a British passport, in the name of Norman Frank Kember. The tape was claimed to be made by a previously unknown group calling itself ?The Brigades of the Swords of Right?.

Mr Kember was in the final days of a two-week fact-finding trip with CPT ? a Canada-based humanitarian organisation ? with an American (Tom Fox, 54) and two Canadians (James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32) when they were seized as they left a mosque in western Baghdad. The team, which was working with Iraqi groups and was not involved in missionary work, had been meeting local leaders to discuss human-rights abuses. They had reportedly been travelling with ?minimal security?.

The British Foreign Office set up a ?hostage crisis? team to try to secure the release of the men. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said that the Iraqi authorities had pledged ?every assistance? to free the captives. Canon Andrew White, chief executive of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, was said to be working with the authorities to try to resolve the situation. Reached by The Tablet in Baghdad on Tuesday, he said he was unable to comment.

Although a Baptist, Mr Kember, 74, a retired radiation physicist, has been a trustee of Pax Christi?s education fund since 2002. Having protested against the invasion of Iraq, he had recently been telling friends that he could not remain a spectator any longer, and wished to travel to the country. He understood the risks involved, he said.

The General Secretary of Pax Christi, Pat Gaffney, said she had known him for 15 years and that he had devoted even more time to the peace movement since his retirement. ?He wanted to express his solidarity with the people of Iraq and to find out what the impact of the war had been,? she told The Tablet. ?His commitment to non-violence and his anti-war stance was very integrated in his mind and had been consistent throughout his life. It would have been more dominant than thoughts about his own safety.?

Most international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have left Iraq in the last 18 months following a wave of kidnappings and beheadings of 5,000 Iraqi and 230 foreign hostages. Many have allegedly been carried out under the auspices of the Jordanian al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

CPT, which has been running projects in Iraq since 2002 and has a permanent staff of between four and six workers stationed in the country, is one of the few NGOs that bases its work outside Baghdad?s fortified Green Zone. Claire Evans, CPT?s delegation coordinator, told The Tablet the organisation provided first-hand, independent reports from the region, works with detainees of both US and Iraqi forces, and trains others in non-violent intervention and human-rights documentation. She added that CPT focused on understanding the perspective of ordinary people in the conflict zone.
Michael Hirst