Video of hostages comes with deadline

Another deadline looms for Auckland student Harmeet Sooden, who was kidnapped in Iraq last November, after a new video of him and his fellow hostages showed them alive but in poor condition.

Mr Sooden, 32, a Canadian citizen who studied in New Zealand, was shown yesterday on a video broadcast on al-Jazeera television with three other peace activists captured more than two months ago.

His brother-in-law Mark Brewer said the tape, dated January 21, gave a deadline of seven days for all Iraqi prisoners in American and Iraqi prisons to be released or the hostages would be killed.

"The 21st was the date on the tape, and it was seven days from then, which brings us right up to now. So it's a very tense time ... Every phone call we hope is a phone call of good news."

Mr Brewer said they heard of the tape at 4am yesterday.

"I guess we had mixed emotions. There was relief he is still alive, obviously, but disappointment he was not released.

"We are concerned about the way he looked. He looks considerably changed, and I think it has taken its toll on him.

"He has lost weight since then and looks tired and drawn. [The hostages] are certainly a different looking group from the one we last saw."

The video was the first news of the hostages since December 7, when their captors, the Swords of Truth, said they would be killed on December 10 unless Iraqi prisoners in American and Iraqi prisons were released.

The grainy footage showed the four hostages standing against a wall in a dark room, apparently in their own clothes. The hostages appeared to be speaking to the camera but their voices could not be heard.

"The group ... said it was giving a last chance for its demands to be met through the release of Iraqi prisoners in American and Iraqi prisons in exchange for the release of the four hostages," al-Jazeera reported.

The family were waiting to get an unedited copy of the tape from Iraq in the hope of discovering more about Mr Sooden's condition.

Prime Minister Helen Clark urged the captors to release the hostages.

Mr Sooden, Briton Norman Kember, American Tom Fox and Canadian James Loney were kidnapped on November 26 in Baghdad, where they were working with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

The previously unknown Swords of Truth had claimed the quartet were spies, but friends and several groups, both Muslim and Christian, have insisted they were friends of the Iraqi people and against the American-led presence in Iraq.

Diplomatic efforts to free Mr Sooden have been led by the Canadian Government, which Helen Clark said New Zealand was doing its best to support.

Mr Brewer said the six weeks between news of Harmeet "felt like six months".

"You get into a routine of day-to-day life of checking for information and talking to people. You get into almost a sense of false security. You get into a lull of being very happy there's no bad news."

He said the family planned to fly to Iraq as soon as there was any news.