four months of captivity in Iraq.
Loney, 41, told a group of reporters shortly after arriving at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport that for "118 days" he had "disappeared into a black hole and somehow, by God’s grace, I was spit out again." Surrounded by friends and family members and reading from prepared notes, he stressed "it was a terrifying, profound, powerful, transformative and excruciatingly boring experience."
After speaking for about five minutes, Loney was whisked off by Royal Canadian Mounted Police to a waiting car outside. Loney, along with fellow Canadian, Harmeet Singh Sooden, 33, Briton Norman Kember, 74, and American Tom Fox, 54, were kidnapped in Baghdad on November 26 by a group calling itself the words of Righteousness Brigades.
GUNSHOT WOUNDS
Fox’s body was discovered March 9, near a west Baghdad railway line with gunshot wounds to his head and chest. The remaining three hostages were finally rescued in a joint US-British operation between the towns of Mishahda, 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Baghdad, and the western suburb of Abu Ghraib, 12 miles (about 19 kilometers) from downtown, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said.
The men were on mission for the Chicago and Toronto-based conflict resolution group Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), to "build bridges for peace," the organization has said. CPT criticized the US-led invasion in Iraq and exposed abuses of Iraqi prisoners, while helping their relatives.
Yet on Sunday, March 26, Loney said he was thankful to his rescuers, singling out the British soldiers and the Canadian government, saying: "I am forever and truly grateful."
The former social worker said little of his captors or of his treatment at their hands and did not take questions from journalists who met him at the airport, reporters said. Loney stressed now that he is free again he just wants to get reacquainted with his family and other members of his community.
"DIRTY DISHES"
"All I really want to do is to love and be loved by the people that I love," he added. "The one specific thing might be to wash a sink full of dirty dishes."
His brothers Ed and Matt had arrived earlier from the west coast city of Vancouver to welcome their sibling home, news reports said. "I’m riding on elation. I’m so looking forward to how this is going to unfold," Ed Loney told Canada’s CBC News network before his brother arrived. "My smile, hopefully, says it all."
Patrick Nadon, a friend of Loney’s who was also at the airport, told reporters it "was just great to be able to give him a hug and know he was OK." Nadon said that "he’s lost a lot of weight and the transition of coming back here is probably going to take some time, but he looks strong."
Loney was expected to head to his home town of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario at some point. He and Sooden, who celebrated his 33rd birthday in Baghdad Friday, March 24, were flown from Iraq on Saturday, March 25, to Dubai aboard a Canadian air force Hercules C-130. Sooden, a Canadian residing in New Zealand, was joined by his family in Dubai from where they took a commercial flight to Auckland, New Zealand, while Loney flew via Frankfurt, Germany, to Toronto.
NEW ZEALAND
Sooden was expected to return arrive to Auckland, New Zealand on Monday, March 27, to a
warning from Prime Minister Helen Clark not to go back to Iraq. Clark reportedly said it was not helpful for Sooden and other CPT members to go to Iraq.
"The New Zealand government constantly says to Kiwis ‘Don’t go there. You are walking into a war zone. It is a very, very dangerous place and New Zealand is not represented in Iraq in any shape or form and we are not in a position to help’," she told local media.
Sooden and his father Daleep Sooden were briefly reunited in a secret location in Dubai. In published remarks, Mark Brewer, Sooden’s brother-in-law said the meeting was very important for the family. "It brought a sense of closure, especially for his dad who got to see him and it was great for him," he said.
"You can’t be disappointed seeing someone after so long and obviously that was the feeling for his dad." Meanwhile the third surviving captive, Pat Kember, who already arrived home Saturday, March 25, attended his first Sunday worship service. The retired professor of medical ethics attended the service at Harrow Baptist Church in Pinner, north-west London, with his wife Pat, 72.
WORSHIPPING GOD
Reverend Bob Gardiner told the congregation Kember had asked for seats to be reserved at the back so the couple could slip in to the service quietly.
"Norman was quite insistent that if he was free, he was free to worship … he’s only come on condition we let him creep in to worship God quietly and peacefully, to creep out also, without having a great circus around him," he said.
Former Church of England envoy Terry Waite, himself held hostage for five years in Lebanon between 1987 and 1991, reportedly said that Christian peace workers like Kember should think carefully before going to Iraq. "I would not at this stage recommend people be involved in the middle of that situation from the West," he told Sky News. "I applaud the motives. I want peace as they want peace. I question the tactic."
However CPT has said Jesus took risks as well and that peacemakers should sometimes be prepared to go to zones of conflicts. "The military believes in building peace by using violence…If you leave a conflict zone to people with guns and the military, you will not build peace," said CPT’s British representative David Cockburn earlier. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Baghdad, Toronto, Auckland and London).
