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A New Zealand student held hostage in Iraq for four months says he hasn't decided whether to testify against his captors.
Briton Norman Kember, who along with Auckland student Harmeet Sooden and Canadian James Loney was freed from his hostage deal in Iraq in March, yesterday said he had been told Iraqi police had captured their alleged captors.
Mr Kember told Channel 4 television in Britain that he wasn't keen on testifying against his captors, and that he would consider testifying only if he believed it could get further clemency for the men.
Mr Sooden, in an email reply to NZPA, said he had yet to make up his mind.
"I am not able to comment at this time," he said. "I will release a statement once I have made a decision."
Scotland Yard asked Mr Kember to give evidence at their trial, but he said he would have a moral dilemma testifying against his kidnappers because he was strongly opposed to the death sentence.
Mr Kember said he knew Mr Loney had been contacted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
"He is in the same moral dilemma that I am," Mr Kember said.
"And I think Harmeet has been contacted in New Zealand, but we are in contact and I hope that we can come to a common agreement so that we can act together."
Mr Sooden, Mr Kember and Mr Loney were among four members of a Christian "Peacemaker Team" captured in Iraq last November by a group calling themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade.
The fourth member, American Tom Fox, was shot to death two weeks before his colleagues were released.
In a press conference shortly after his return to New Zealand, Mr Sooden said the quartet established a reasonable connection with their captors.
"There were moments we would joke around, but always in the forefront of my mind was survival," he said.
He said the Iraqi people, including his captors, were just as much victims.
He believed his captors were simply after a ransom to fund the insurgency in Iraq, though he didn't believe they were linked to al Qaeda.
- NZPA
