Norman Kember

Norman Kember and three others were gathering evidence about people being abused while detained by occupation forces in Iraq.

Kember and his three friends were kidnapped. Kember and two of the friends have now been released.

According to The Independemt:

It is believed that the location where the three men were held in west Baghdad was traced after information was supplied by Iraqi go-betweens who had established contact with the kidnappers...

British defence sources insisted it was they who had gathered the intelligence for the rescue, 12 miles from Baghdad.

However in Baghdad itself, a US Major-General, Rick Lynch, asserted that one of the two suspects arrested by American forces supplied vital information.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article353301.ece

UK Defence Secretary John Reid said: "British troops were involved... It was several weeks in the planning."

The mission, led by a British Special Air Services team, "follows weeks and weeks of very careful work by military and coalition personnel in Iraq and many civilians as well," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in London.

But US army spokesman Major General Rick Lynch said the rescue mission was launched just hours after two men were arrested and revealed the address where the hostages were being held. Source: WAS Norman Kember's rescue the result of weeks of preparation or a ...

U.S. military spokesman Lynch, speaking to reporters in Baghdad, said the operation was put together in three hours. Source: Release of Westerners in Iraq Is Bittersweet

On 23 March 2006, British-led forces rescued the three Christian peace activists, including Briton Norman Kember, after finding them tied up in a house in western Baghdad.

No shots were fired and no kidnappers were found. The three members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams organization were in good condition

Could the kidnappers have been connected to a certain security service?

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Tom Fox was the American held with Norman Kember.

Peggy Gish, of Christian Peacemaker Teams activists said the freed hostages told their colleagues Thursday that Fox had been separated from them in early February, about a month before his body was found. They did not learn of their American colleague's death until after their release, she said.

In February 2006, the body of 54-year-old American Tom Fox was found with marks of having been tortured, in the Mansour district of Baghdad.


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