Three Kidnapped Peace Activists Freed in Baghdad

Briton Norman Kember and two Canadian fellow peace activists held hostage in Iraq for almost four months have been freed by multinational forces.

Mr Kember, 74, of north-west London, James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, were three of four men seized in Baghdad in November.

Mr Kember said in a statement: "It is great to be free, and I'm looking forward to getting back to the UK."

The men's US colleague, Tom Fox, was found dead in Baghdad two weeks ago.

The three men are believed to have been rescued at 0800 local time (0500 GMT), following a weeks-long operation led by British troops and involving US and Canadian special forces.

Officials have revealed few details of the operation, but it is known that none of the captors was present, no shots were fired and no-one was injured.

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Rescued British hostage Norman Kember said today it was "great to be free" after he and two Canadian colleagues were released from captivity in Iraq in a military raid.

"I'm looking forward to getting back to the UK," the 74-year-old peace worker, who was kidnapped last November, said in a brief statement released by the British embassy in Baghdad.

The three were seized this morning from a house in western Baghdad in an intelligence-led operation spearheaded by British troops.

The US Major General Rick Lynch told a press conference in Baghdad that coalition forces learned of the hostages' location from two men arrested last night.

The hostages' hands were bound together but no kidnappers were present when the US-British force broke into the house. Maj Gen Lynch said the three were being held by a "kidnapping cell" but did not elaborate.

The Ministry of Defence has also refused to comment on reports the SAS were involved.

The two Canadians, Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, and James Loney, 41, are with Mr Kember in the Green Zone in Baghdad, but a fourth hostage and fellow member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams mission to Iraq, US citizen Tom Fox, was found murdered earlier this month in Baghdad.

Announcing Mr Kember's release, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said he was "delighted that now we have a happy ending" to the ordeal.

"I spoke to Mrs Kember ... and it goes without saying that she is absolutely elated and delighted with this news.

"There is a last, very sad, point which is that there were four hostages and it is a matter of great sorrow that Mr Fox was killed a little while ago."

During their nearly four months of captivity, the hostages were seen a number of times in films released by their kidnappers.

In one of the videos released in early December, Mr Kember, a retired professor and former medical physicist from Pinner, north London, urged Mr Blair to pull British troops out of Iraq. The kidnappers threatened to kill Mr Kember and the three other hostages if all Iraqi detainees were not freed.

A number of appeals were made for the release of the four hostages. Mr Kember's wife, Pat, said in a recording released in December, that her husband "was a good man who believed in peace".

Abu Qatada, one of Britain's most high-profile international terror suspects, also issued a televised appeal for Mr Kember's release from inside Full Sutton maximum security jail, near York.

A friend of Mr Kember, Bruce Kent, today said the release of the three hostages was "marvellous news".

"I can hardly believe it," he told Sky News. "I have just heard the news. I am delighted it is wonderful news particularly for his wife and family. It has been a bad few weeks after the death of Mr Fox. We thought that if one was killed there would be others.

"Obviously our hopes were much further down than they were before. This news makes my day."

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British citizen Norman Kember and Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden are among at least 280 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis who have been taken hostage since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Abductions of foreigners are usually motivated by politics - calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces or prisoner releases - while Iraqis are usually ransomed for money.

Some nationalities - from less influential or economically developed parts of the world - have simply been executed by their abductors to deter others from coming to Iraq.

Mr Kember, Mr Loney and Mr Sooden were seized on 26 November 2005, along with fellow aid worker Tom Fox, who shared the fate of about 50 other foreign hostages - to be murdered by their captors.

Mr Fox - a US citizen - was found handcuffed and shot dead on a rubbish dump in west Baghdad on 7 March.

In all, about 140 of the foreign hostages seized in Iraq have been released or managed to escape - while the fate of the other 90 remains unknown.

Mr Kember and his colleagues worked for Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a humanitarian organisation that operates in North and South America and the Middle East.

CPT's overtly Christian title was considered possibly relevant to their capture, given the extremist Islamic agenda of the kidnappers - but they were probably seized because they lacked the heavily armed "close protection" employed by most foreigners in Iraq.

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