LONDON - Freed Christian peace campaigner Norman Kember has arrived home in the UK following his rescue by special forces soldiers after being held hostage in Iraq for four months.
Kember, 74, a retired professor of medical ethics, arrived at London's Heathrow Airport on a scheduled British Airways flight from Kuwait, where he had been flown in a British military transport plane from Baghdad on Friday afternoon.
Looking tired and frail, but speaking in a firm voice, he thanked the soldiers who had rescued him, New Zealand resident Harmeet Sooden, and Canadian Jim Loney from kidnappers on Thursday.
"I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my release," he said in a prepared statement shortly after arrival.
British Army chief Michael Jackson had criticised Kember for apparently failing to thank the soldiers who freed him and his colleagues.
Sitting next to his wife Pat, 72, in an airport hospitality lounge, Kember said he was not ready to talk about his time in captivity.
He said the world should spare a thought for Iraqi citizens who had to live through the daily violence plaguing the country.
"There is a real sense in which you are interviewing the wrong person," he said.
"It is the ordinary people of Iraq that you should be talking to - the people who have suffered so much over many years and still await the stable and just society that they deserve.
"I now need to reflect on my experience - was I foolhardy or rational? - and also to enjoy freedom in peace and quiet."
Kember's wife has described her husband's decision to go to Baghdad as "silly", but said she accepted the need he felt to be active in his pacifism before he got too old.
Kember was rescued with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) colleagues
Harmeet Sooden, a New Zealand resident, and Canadian Jim Loney - from an unguarded house in a Sunni insurgent area to the west of the Iraqi capital. They were found manacled but unhurt.
The fourth hostage, American Tom Fox, was found shot dead two weeks ago.
Sooden, 32, and Loney, 41, headed to Baghdad airport on Saturday to begin their journey home, a colleague said.
A lifelong committed Christian, Kember had protested against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and had gone to Baghdad to spread his message of peace.
CPT emerged in 1989 out of the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker Friends Society and the Church of Brethren to send teams of Christians trained in techniques of non-violent action to conflicts around the world.
It has had a presence in Iraq since 2001.
As a member of the Baptist Peace Fellowship, Kember was part of the delegation that in September 2002 presented Prime Minister Tony Blair with a petition against going to war in Iraq. He later took part in anti-war demonstrations.
Kember is a trustee of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a Christian peace group, and a trustee of Pax Christi's Christian Peace Education Fund.
- REUTERS
Hostage Kember returns home
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