Baghdad, Iraq – British and U.S. troops rescued three kidnapped Christian peace activists early Thursday in a military operation that was based on information provided by two men detained only three hours earlier by U.S. forces, according to a U.S. military official.
The freed captives – Norman Kember, 74, of London, and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada – were members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, a Chicago- and Toronto-based group that advocates nonviolence and is opposed to the war in Iraq.
They were kidnapped in Baghdad on Nov. 26 along with a fourth member of their group, Tom Fox of Clear Brook, Va.
The well-being of the three abductees had been a cause for concern since Fox’s body was discovered on a trash-strewn street in Baghdad two weeks ago, hands bound and shot multiple times.
The freeing of the hostages came during a day in which at least 44 people were killed and scores wounded in a rash of car bombings, suicide bombings and roadside explosions, many of which targeted Iraqi police units in and around Baghdad.
Circumstances of the rescue operation, which was spearheaded by the British, were being closely held.
Doug Pritchard, co-director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, said in a televised news conference in Toronto that no shots were fired and no captors were present at the time of the rescue.
He declined to divulge the source of his information. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed that no shots were fired.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, at a regular military briefing in Baghdad, said the men had been abducted by a “kidnapping cell” and were in a house in western Baghdad.
That information came from two men detained about three hours before the operation who provided “actionable intelligence about the location” of the house, he said.
The captives “were bound, they were together, there were no kidnappers in the area,” Lynch told reporters.
British Defense Secretary John Reid said the 5 a.m. operation had been “several” weeks in the planning. A statement by the British Embassy in Baghdad said the raid was the culmination “of work over the last few months by the U.K., Canadian and U.S. embassies and special police teams, in coordination with Iraqi security forces.”
The statements left many unanswered questions. It was unclear whether the kidnappers – who claimed to belong to a little- known group called Swords of Righteousness Brigade – had been tipped off about the raid, had been paid to leave or simply left the men unguarded.
The group had accused the men of being Western spies and had threatened to kill them unless all Iraqi prisoners were released.
The men had appeared in three videos released by their captors. The last, which aired March 7 on al-Jazeera television, did not show Fox, which raised an alarm about his well-being. Two days later, his body was found, heightening concern for the fate of his three co-workers.
A Western official in Baghdad said in December that 425 foreigners had been kidnapped in Iraq since March 2003 and that 18 percent had been killed. Of 40 Americans kidnapped, 10 had been killed, the official said. At the time, the fate of Fox was unknown.
Still missing is Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for the Christian Science Monitor who was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad.
She was last seen in a video broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station al-Rai.
Meanwhile, 26 people, including 15 policemen, were killed and 32 people were wounded when a powerful car bomb exploded about noon Thursday near the major crime unit of the Baghdad police in the central part of the capital, police said.
Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb exploded at a police checkpoint near the major crime unit’s former headquarters in western Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding five people.
Another car bomb was exploded by remote control near a Shiite mosque in western Baghdad, killing two people and injuring six, according to Lt. Col. Muhammed Abdulkadhum of the Baghdad police. Hospital records listed six dead and 31 wounded in the incident.
A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in south-central Baghdad killed three policemen and wounded seven people, and a car bomb targeting a police patrol in central Baghdad killed four policemen and a civilian and wounded eight people, police said.
In all, 23 police officers were killed in the Baghdad attacks.
