Four peace activists, including a Briton, taken hostage in Iraq were accused of being spies in a video released on Tuesday night by a previously unknown group of insurgents.
In a development that one terrorism expert said was ”ominous”, the kidnappers — who called themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade — said Norman Kember and the three other men held with him had been masquerading as Christian peace activists in the country to work as spies.
Kember (74) was pictured in the video seated next to three other men, who are believed to be an American and two Canadians taken with him from western Baghdad on Saturday. Their identities have yet to be confirmed.
Unlike in some previous videos released by kidnappers in Iraq, Kember and his colleagues were not caged and were not made to wear orange overalls like those worn by terror suspects held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay.
Dressed in a hacking jacket, the retired medical physicist who was in Iraq as part of a Christian Peacemaker team, sat motionless as the camera panned across the group of hostages. Shots of Kember’s passport were also displayed in the video, released through the Arab television station al-Jazeera. In the corner of the screen, two crossed black swords could be seen and the name of the group written in red in Arabic script. The date on the video was November 27 2005, the day after the men were abducted.
Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert, said the insurgents are adopting tactics used during the civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s.
”These names they use are often just grabbed out of the air, a tactic which goes back to Beirut. This sort of discourse about spying and acting on behalf of enemy forces is always ominous,” Ranstorp said.
”One has a sense that this is not going to end in a nice fashion. Beirut and what happened to Terry Waite also shows that the fact these men are Christians does not give them immunity from being fair game. On the contrary, for some it may be convenient that they are Christians; it may serve their purposes.”
Family and friends of Kember, a grandfather who lives with his wife, Pat, in Pinner, north-west London, appealed to the kidnappers to release him on Tuesday night. The Reverend Alan Betteridge, from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which Kember is a member, said he is a ”genuine peace activist”.
”It is a good thing that the silence has been broken. We would like to think these people will recognise the sort of person he is and the release of the video will be followed by his release,” he said.
Bruce Kent, former chairperson of CND and a friend of Kember, dismissed any suggestion that he was a spy.
”The last thing he would do would be working for the British government,” he said.
Kember, who campaigned against the war in Iraq, was seized on Saturday from a mosque he was visiting in a Sunni area of western Baghdad with the three other hostages. It has been reported that they were talking to Muslim clerics about the abuse of Sunni detainees.
Before travelling to Iraq, he said the trip was designed as a ”gesture of solidarity” with Christian Peacemaker teams, a Canadian-based peace group working in Iraq.
Speaking to Premier Christian Radio, he said he hoped to meet ordinary Iraqis. When asked if going to Iraq was brave, he answered: ”I don’t know, I’ve done a lot of writing and talking about peacemaking. I’ve demonstrated, you name it, I’ve been on it, but I feel that’s what I’d call cheap peacemaking.”
Asked if the trip to Iraq could be costly, Kember replied: ”It could be.”
In a statement on Tuesday night, the British Foreign Office said it ”utterly condemned” the kidnapping of Kember.
”The release of this video can only cause further heartache and distress to the family,” it said.
News of the video came after it was disclosed that a third British Muslim has died following a gun attack on a bus carrying pilgrims in Iraq.
Yahya Gulamali (60), a businessman from west London, died from his injuries in hospital in the early hours of Tuesday after the ambush, which has already claimed the lives of two other British Shias and injured two more.
The five pilgrims were on their way to Baghdad airport to return home when the attack occurred. — Guardian Unlimited Â