Freed hostage expected home today

Harmeet Sooden celebrates his release and his 33rd birthday in the Christian Peacemakers Teams headquarters in Baghdad. Picture / CPT

Freed New Zealand hostage Harmeet Sooden is expected home in Auckland this afternoon, after a brief reunion with his father in the Middle East at the weekend.

Mr Sooden was initially expected to return home with his father and brother-in-law after they flew to the United Arab Emirates to meet him.

But it appeared last night that they will travel separately, after the Canadian Air Force flew the Auckland University student and Toronto-based peace activist James Loney from Baghdad on a Hercules military transporter.

Television NZ, which rival TV3 said would have paid up to $30,000 including costs of flying Mr Sooden snr and son-in-law Mark Brewer to the Middle East in return for an exclusive news deal, said the Canadian authorities had kept journalists at bay.

Dalip Sooden held a tearful reunion with his 33-year-old son in Dubai late on Saturday, but the television organisation said the meeting was brief and its reporter was allowed nowhere near it.

Although the television deal was supposed to have included costs of repatriating Mr Sooden, a Canadian citizen with New Zealand residency, Mr Brewer said last night that the Canadian Government wanted to take its own steps to ensure his safe return.

Mr Sooden was visiting Iraq with the Christian Peacemaker Teams when he and three other delegates were captured at gunpoint in November by a group calling itself the Brigades of the Swords of Righteousness. They spent 118 days in captivity.

Although the peace group announced yesterday that Mr Loney would arrive in his home city of Toronto early today, it remained unclear last night just when Mr Sooden would reach Auckland.

A third hostage, Briton Norman Kember, 74, arrived in London on Saturday but the body of the fourth, American Tom Fox, was found in a rubbish tip about 2 weeks ago.

Family members of Mr Sooden in Auckland are referring all media inquiries to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which said it did not want to "compromise his privacy" by disclosing his travel plans.

But three Emirates flights are due to arrive in Auckland early this afternoon from the United Arab Emirates, including one from Dubai, where the Soodens were reunited.

One of Mr Sooden's friends at Auckland University, Daniele Abreu e Lima, said yesterday she had some concern that his ordeal might have left him in a fragile condition for travel.

Although she believes he will continue his peace activism now he has been released, she said it was impossible to guess how his life might be changed by his ordeal.

But a Christian Peacemaker Teams member in Dunedin who has served on two delegations to the Middle East, Christina Gibb, said Mr Sooden appeared from photographs taken of him in Baghdad since his release to be in good physical condition.

These included a picture of him tucking into a birthday cake, supplied by Canadian members of the organisation and decorated with maple-leaf icing.

Ms Lima said he sounded well when he phoned her at 4am on Friday, just hours after the trio's rescue by British and other forces, but was shocked to discover only then that Mr Fox had been killed.

The hostages have come under fire in some military and political circles for allegedly telling the rescuers little about their captors, apparently saying this would contradict their pacifist principles.

After initial criticism that they also failed to thank their rescuers publicly, Christian Peacemaker Teams issued a statement from Canada saying it was grateful to the soldiers who risked lives to save them.

"As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to non-violence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues."

The hostages themselves have issued a brief statement saying: "We are deeply grateful to those who worked and prayed for our release. We have no words to describe our feelings of great joy at being free again.

"Our heads are swirling and, when we are ready, we will talk to the media."