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Christian
Group Blames US, UK for Iraq Kidnappings
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Image taken from Al-Jazeera of two of the four hostages.
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MONTREAL,
November 30, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The United
States and Britain were to blame for the kidnappings in Iraq due to
their "illegal acts" against the people there, said a
statement by a Christian group which identified four of its members as
the abductees in a video aired Wednesday, November 30.
"We
are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of
the actions of the US and UK governments due to the illegal attack on
Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people,"
said the group in a statement on their Web site.
American
Tom Fox, 54; Briton Norman Kember, 74; and two Canadians, James Loney,
41 and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, were kidnapped in Baghdad Saturday
November 26, according to the US and Canada-based Christian Peacemaker
Teams.
"Christian
Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has worked for the rights of Iraqi prisoners
who have been illegally detained and abused by the US
government," read the statement on the group's Web site.
The
group says it was one of the adamant protestors against humiliation of
prisoner, even before the international media broke into the Abu
Ghraib torture scandal.
According
to the CPT Web site, the group recruits volunteers from sponsor
churches, including the Mennonite churches of Canada and the United
States and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, to travel to war zones
and crisis centers to promote what it termed "non-violence".
The
abduction of the CPT four members, in addition to the kidnap of the
first German national since the 2003 US-led invasion brought to the
fore a scary crisis that has been waning recently.
Dozens
of foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq since the invasion in
2003. Some have been killed, while there has been speculation some
governments paid ransoms to secure the release of their nationals.
Abductions
are blamed by US authorities on the ghostly Jordanian-born Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi, but most Iraqi resistance groups have always distanced
themselves from the slaughter of hostages.
In
March this year, the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jama`)
has urged all its members to remain committed to the Front's
guidelines in fighting the US-led occupation, chiefly avoiding the use
of bobby-trapped cars inside the cities, the slaughter of hostages and
the killing of any Iraqi.
Sources
close the Front had revealed to IOL that Jama` issued a statement to
distance itself from people shown on Iraqi satellite and ground TV
stations confessing membership in armed groups involved in carrying
out attacks against Iraqi police and army troops and in slaying
“collaborators” with the occupation.
Hostages
in Iraq are not just foreigners. Some Arab and Muslims were also
kidnapped, with some of them losing their lives at the hands of their
captors.
Canadian
Prime Minister Paul Martin meanwhile said Tuesday that his government
was doing all possible to free the Canadians in the group.
"I
can assure Canadians than there is no more urgent priority than the
safe return of our citizens," Martin said, according to Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
German
Hostage
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"We will not be blackmailed," Merkel said.
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Meanwhile,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel Wednesday said Germany would not be
blackmailed by the captors of the German woman, as the hostage's
sister urged the government to show flexibility to save her life.
"We
will not be blackmailed," Merkel said in her first speech to the
German parliament since taking office last week, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
"We
cannot fail in our fight against terrorism."
Susanne
Osthoff is the first German national to be taken hostage in Iraq and
her disappearance marks Merkel's first test as chancellor.
ARD
public television said it had obtained a video cassette in Baghdad in
which the kidnappers threatened to kill Osthoff and her driver unless
Berlin broke off all cooperation with the Iraqi government.
Germany
has no troops in Iraq and strongly opposed the US-led invasion but is
helping to train Iraqi security forces, although not on Iraqi soil but
in Germany and the United Arab Emirates.
Osthoff's
sister Anja, meanwhile, appealed to the government to reconsider its
relations with Baghdad in order to save the 43-year-old archeologist's
life.
"I
hope that the government is not too obstinate and will give more
thought to changing its policy on Iraq," she said.
Muslim
leaders in Germany have condemned the abduction of the German female
archaeologist in Iraq, offering assistance to secure her release.
"We
are ready to do our utmost efforts to secure the release of Susanne
Osthoff," Ayman Mazik, the media officer of the Central Council
of Muslims in Germany, told IOL Tuesday.
A
trained archaeologist who had been doing aid work in Iraq for several
years, Osthoff has an 11-year-old daughter by a man of Arab origin, is
a convert to Islam and is fluent in Arabic, according to family
members.
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