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Abduction of four CPT members in Iraq (November 2005-March 2006)

Resource, Electronic Iraq

Dec 2, 2005



INTRODUCTION

On November 29, 2005, CPT Hebron contacted EI about the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams who were abducted in Iraq on November 26th. The four men were two CPTers and two delegates, one American, one British, and two Canadian. Held by a previously unknown group, the "Sword of Righteousness", the four appeared in a video released by the captors and broadcast on Al-Jazeera. The four kidnapped Christian peace activists were seen together in three subsequent videos aired by Al Jazeera TV in December 2005 and January 2006. The kidnappers of the four Christian peace activists threatened to kill them unless all Iraqi prisoners were released from Iraqi and U.S. prisons. A fourth video aired in March and showed all of the hostages except American Tom Fox.

On March 10, 2006, Fox's was discovered in a Baghdad neighborhood. Fox was in Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an organization that calls on Christians to "devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war." Fox had been working in Iraq since 2004, documenting detainee abuse, advocating for the human rights of all Iraqis, accompanying refugees and protesting the occupation.

On March 23, 2006, Fox's three colleagues - Jim Loney, Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember - were freed in Baghdad after nearly four months in captivity. All reports indicate that the three were freed by a multinational force and that no shots were fired and none of the captors were present at the time of the raid, reportedly led by British troops. Kember, Loney, and Sooden, were found inside a house in western Baghdad with their hands tied. They were taken to the British Embassy inside the fortified "Green Zone."


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