Release of Westerners in Iraq Is Bittersweet

Aided by a tip from an Iraqi prisoner, a British-led military operation Thursday rescued three Westerners whose abductors had held them hostage since November, killed their American colleague, and finally left them tied up in an empty house.

No shots were fired and no kidnappers were present when a force of British, U.S. and Canadian troops raided the house on Baghdad’s rural outskirts and found the three members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams organization in good condition, said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman.

The activists -- Norman Kember, 74, of Britain, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32 -- were seized by gunmen in Baghdad on Nov. 26 along with the American, Tom Fox, 54. The kidnappers demanded the release of all Iraqi prisoners.

Fox’s body was found March 9, with multiple bullet wounds in the head and chest. The corpse had been left in a garbage dump near a railway line in a western neighborhood of the capital.

“We had longed for the day when all four men would be released together,” said Doug Pritchard, Toronto-based codirector of the Christian Peacemaker Teams group, which describes its mission as reducing violence and protecting human rights in war zones. “Our gladness today is made bittersweet by the fact that Tom is not alive to join his colleagues in the celebration.”

The news was also tempered by continuing insurgent bombings and sectarian killings that on Thursday left at least 56 Iraqis dead.

Kidnappings by insurgents and criminal gangs have plagued Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion three years ago to topple Saddam Hussein. At least 430 foreigners, including 41 U.S. citizens, have been taken hostage and seven are still being held, including Jill Carroll, an American freelance writer for the Christian Science Monitor who was abducted Jan. 7.

“We’ll work as hard as we can to bring about the release of the remaining hostages,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told Fox News television channel.

He said the rescue of the activists, “in terms of information gathered, could help us bring about Miss Carroll’s release as well.”

The hostage rescue Thursday was the first brought about by a military operation in Iraq since June.

The mission, led by a British Special Air Services team, “follows weeks and weeks of very careful work by military and coalition personnel in Iraq and many civilians as well,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in London.

U.S. military spokesman Lynch, speaking to reporters in Baghdad, said the operation was put together in three hours after a prisoner being interrogated by American forces pinpointed the location of the hostages. Iraqi officials said it was a house on the capital’s northwestern outskirts.

Lynch said he was reluctant to give details because “there are other operations that continue, probably as a result of what we’re finding at this time.”

The freed hostages were taken to the Green Zone, Baghdad’s fortified administrative center, for hospital checkups followed by debriefings at the British Embassy, where they were expected to stay until leaving Iraq to rejoin their families.

“It’s great to be free,” Kember told his hosts, embassy spokeswoman Lisa Glover said.

“They looked good and told us they had not been abused or beaten,” said Peggy Gish, who visited the men with two fellow Christian Peacemaker Teams activists still working in Iraq. She said the freed captives had lost weight after months of inadequate food.

Gish said the freed hostages told their colleagues Thursday that Fox had been separated from them in early February, about a month before his body was found. They did not learn of their American colleague’s death until after their release, she said.

“They’re dealing with that blow on top of all the emotion of being free,” Gish said. “At this point, they’re overwhelmed, trying to absorb what has happened.”

She said the men’s captors had held them together in a large room and sometimes allowed them to jog inside it for exercise. They were handcuffed and blindfolded part of the time, she said.

Loney’s brother Ed said the activist told their mother by phone that he had lost 20 pounds in captivity.

“She said he sounded fantastic,” Ed Loney told CBC Radio. “He was alert and was asking how we were doing. He said he was kind of sorry about the whole situation.”

Members of the organization, headquartered in Toronto and Chicago, have traveled to conflict zones across the world over the last 20 years, motivated by a religiously inspired belief in nonviolence.

In Iraq, they work with human rights organizations, investigating allegations of abuse against Iraqi detainees by U.S. and British forces, and help with cleanup and rebuilding efforts in war-torn cities.

Christian Peacemaker Teams has spoken out often against the U.S. and British military presence here. Even after those forces rescued its activists, the organization, in a statement, reiterated its belief that “the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq.”

The four men were abducted while driving to their headquarters after visiting Sunni Muslim clerics in Baghdad.

The Swords of Righteousness Brigade, a previously unknown group, announced it was holding the men. Although the kidnappers demanded freedom for prisoners, it was never clear to the authorities whether the group was a criminal gang or part of the anti-government insurgency.

The four men appeared as captives in several videos before the most recent one, a silent clip dated Feb. 28, showed Loney, Kember and Sooden without Fox.

In Thursday’s violence, the Interior Ministry said, 15 police officers and 10 civilians were killed when a suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden car at a checkpoint outside its Major Crimes division headquarters in Baghdad.

It was the Sunni-led insurgency’s third deadly attack on a police facility in three days.

A second car bomb killed eight people at a market near a Shiite Muslim mosque in Shurta Khamsa, a neighborhood in southwest Baghdad.

Fifty-seven people were reported wounded in the two explosions.

Times staff writer Louise Roug contributed to this report.