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Hostages urge US, Britain to leave Iraq
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-07 09:09
A group of Christian peace activists kidnapped in Iraq urged Britain and the
United States to pull out of the violence-torn country in a video excerpt aired
Tuesday by the British Broadcasting Corp.
This combo of undated pictures released by the
Christian Peacemaker Teams shows from L to R clockwise: Kidnapped US
national Tom Fox, British national Norman Kember, and Canadian nationals
James Loney, and Harmeet Singh
Sooden.[AFP/file] | The BBC said the excerpt was an unseen section of a video broadcast last
week by Al-Jazeera in which the Swords of Righteousness Brigade threatened to
kill the four men ¡ª a Briton, an American and two Canadians ¡ª unless all
prisoners in U.S. and Iraqi detention centers are freed by Dec. 8. The network
said it obtained the new footage from the Internet.
"I ask Mr. Blair to take British troops out of Iraq and leave the Iraqi
people to come to their own decisions on their government," a British-accented
male voice, presumably that of Briton Norman Kember, said in the new excerpt,
referring to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
A male voice with a North American accent then said: "As a representative of
Christian Peacemaker Teams, we feel that continued American and British
occupation is not in the best interest of the Iraqi people."
The activists ¡ª Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va.; Kember, 74, of London;
James Loney, 41, of Toronto, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, also of Canada ¡ª were
taken hostage Nov. 27.
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