Activists still alive, but face new threat
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Kidnappers threatened to kill four Christian peace activists seized in November unless authorities released all prisoners held in Iraq, according to a report aired Saturday on Arabic television.
The four gaunt-faced men appeared exhausted but unharmed in a grainy, silent video dated Jan. 21 and broadcast on the Al-Jazeera network. The channel’s news reader said that their captors, from the little-known group Swords of Righteousness Brigade, were giving U.S. and Iraqi authorities a “last chance” to release all prisoners in their possession, “otherwise their fate will be death.”
The captors gave no deadline.
The video was the second to emerge since the Nov. 26 kidnapping of Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va.; Norman Kember, 74, of London; and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada. They had been working with the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group that opposes the war in Iraq and has criticized the treatment of the detainees in U.S. and Iraqi jails.
The first video, which appeared soon after the kidnapping, accused the four of being spies for Western governments. The group set a Dec. 8 deadline for their execution, later extended to Dec. 10. Saturday’s video was the first sign that they were still alive since the deadline passed.
Members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams released a statement on their Web site saying they were “grateful and heartened” to see the four men still alive.
“This news is an answer to our prayers,” the statement said. “We continue to hope and pray for their release.”
The kidnappers’ new demand came a day after the broadcast of another video showing two Germans abducted Tuesday near the northern city of Baiji. In that video, Al-Jazeera reported, the captives asked the German government to help secure their release.
It was unclear whether the new demand had any connection to the case of Jill Carroll, an American freelance journalist kidnapped Jan. 7 in Baghdad. A video showing Carroll, 28, came accompanied by demands for the release of all female detainees in Iraq.
On Thursday, U.S. military authorities announced the release of five female Iraqi detainees but said the decision was routine and had nothing to do with the demands. Carroll’s captors, known as the Vengeance Brigade, have made no response to the release.
Car bombings, roadside bombs and attacks by gunmen claimed the lives of at least 32 Iraqis on Saturday, according to news reports. Among those killed was Abdul Razak Naas, a professor at the University of Baghdad and a well-known commentator on Arabic television, who was shot as he left his office.
A U.S. soldier was killed Saturday when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb in central Baghdad, military authorities said Saturday night. Authorities also reported the death of a Marine in a vehicle accident in Fallujah on Friday.