Captive (2016) s01e08 Episode Script
The Peacemakers, Iraq
1 [wind howling.]
[man.]
He was taken out to a site.
He was told to kneel down.
People went behind him.
He was told to run.
And then, he was shot several times with a Kalashnikov.
And it wasn't done on camera.
It wasn't done for propaganda reasons.
It was pure malevolence.
Pure violence.
[man.]
Yeah I often I don't anymore.
I used to think about that moment.
I used to think about "Could we? Should we? What if we had you know did everything we could to get out of that? To fight.
" These are the only things I have, in a way, that are the physical witness to that time period.
This box here includes the clothing that I wore in those 118 days.
So these are the These are the pants.
[sniffs.]
Like, you could see the war clouds coming across the horizon.
[shouting.]
And there was a global movement to try to stop this war from coming.
[shouting.]
[George W.
Bush.]
Major combat operations have ended.
In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
[cheering and applause.]
[motorcycle revving.]
[man.]
I was involved with the invasion of Iraq.
I was actually in Iraq days after Baghdad fell.
For the most part, Iraq was welcoming.
And, in fact, it was We were greeted as liberators.
I was given thumbs up signs and "USA Number 1" from many of the locals on the ground in Baghdad.
They were very happy to have Saddam Hussein displaced.
I come back less than a year later, in July of 2004, into a very different environment.
[explosion.]
[gunfire.]
The insurgency was starting to act up and it broke loose.
[huffing.]
[man.]
I joined the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs in 1980 and then ended up in Baghdad from 2005 to 2006.
Things were going as badly as many of us had thought might happen when the invasion took place two years earlier.
The death rate in Baghdad was incredible.
It was in the thousands per month.
Iraqi on Iraqi.
Never mind the coalition forces and the casualties that they were both inflicting and taking.
[woman.]
For those of us who were there, it was a sense that If we really felt this strongly about it, it wasn't enough to write letters to George Bush.
You had to do something else.
You have to walk the talk.
And that's how I ended up in Baghdad for three years.
[James Loney.]
I would call Christian Peacemaker Teams an experiment in nonviolence.
How do we take the passivity out of pacifism? If we were prepared to take the same risks that soldiers are prepared to take, could we have an impact using the tools of nonviolence? The work we ended up doing in Iraq was essentially to be liaisoning between families who'd had family members or friends detained by coalition forces.
Come on.
Get up! [Maxine Nash.]
Simply to help them find those loved ones in prison.
We were living in an apartment in Baghdad.
People in the military discovered we were living just in this apartment in Baghdad.
[chuckles.]
And they were terribly shocked to find just civilians living in an apartment in Baghdad.
They were a bunch of do-gooders in a very bad part of the world, doing very foolish things, in my humble opinion, and they were extraordinarily naïve to the point of They were They were naïve, and their stupidity put lives at risk for a lot of people, including their own.
[Nash.]
We knew that they felt that we shouldn't have been there, that we put people at risk.
We felt from the outset that US military shouldn't have been there and that they were putting people at risk, and the whole argument could have been flipped.
[alarm blaring.]
CPT offered delegations to Iraq for people who were interested in seeing the situation for themselves firsthand.
Jim was a delegation leader coming with the delegation.
Harmeet and Norman Kember had simply signed up to come to Iraq to see for themselves what the situation was.
[chanting.]
[man.]
I was one of the million who turned out to object to the Iraq War.
And I wondered if there was anything else one could do, and then I learned about the Christian Peacemaker Team.
I thought it would be interesting to see how they worked.
So I only went out to Iraq for ten days, I think it was just to discover what they were up to, what they actually did in Iraq.
We had appointments set up with a Shia cleric and with the Muslim Scholars Association, trying to give them both sides of the picture as far as Shia and Sunni Muslims and how that played out in Iraq.
The delegation had gone off in the morning with a driver and a translator and a team member, and it happened to be Tom Fox.
Tom was a regular core-team member.
Essentially, this was his job.
This was what he signed up for, and he knew that the unexpected could happen.
[horns honking.]
The original plan had been for them to come back to the apartment, trade team member for the afternoon meeting, but they were running late 'cause traffic in Baghdad was horrible.
So they didn't come back and Tom ended up staying with them for the Muslim Scholars Association in the afternoon.
[Loney.]
Well, my understanding of the Muslim Scholars Association is that it had links to the insurgency.
Going to talk to a very hardline Sunni group about trying to ease the problems in Iraq is probably not the wisest thing.
It's a bit like going to see Al Capone in Chicago in the '30s to see if, you know, "Can't you do something about the crime in this city?" "Yes, I can control it all.
You know, that's what I do.
" [Loney.]
We got there, and there was this mosque that Saddam built, called the Mother of All Battles, and the minarets were designed to look like scud missiles.
It's like a vast compound with this big, giant parking lot Empty.
Tom made some comment about somebody kind of observing us, and it gave him a bad feeling.
And then we went in to the reception area.
We had to show our passports.
Which nobody, other than Like, no one asked us to see our passports.
We had to show them.
And I was like [inhales.]
I didn't like that.
So we met with this man.
I don't remember his name, but he was checking his watch.
And then the meeting was over in 20 minutes.
Like, that was it, time to go.
We tried to ask him questions and he just, like had kind of a flat, no-response answer, and we realized, "Well, I guess our meeting's over.
" We were in a van, and they were turning out into the street.
Sort of a lonely, on the edge kind of on the edge of a neighborhood, sort of.
A white car pulled in really in front, and then it started slowing down and put on the brakes.
"What the hell?" Like, "What's going on?" Four guys, they go right away to the driver and translator in the front, and they pull them out.
And they had guns.
This is not good.
This is not good.
[Nash.]
I remember I was doing laundry that day.
Hanging laundry on our roof.
We got a call from our translator, who had been with the group, to say that they had been kidnapped.
"Oh, you're joking? Really, this, you know Don't do that.
Don't joke with us.
" But he was very serious.
[Loney.]
So then it was surreal because we were in gridlock.
We're stopped in traffic.
[horns honking.]
There was, like, a car, like like three feet away from me.
These women in this car and [inhales.]
We are being taken, and you are three feet away from us.
Do I get your attention? Do I shout? Do I try to get out? I don't know what's gonna happen.
Is there gonna be gunfire? Like, you know [stammers.]
What's I just sat there.
And kinda observed it.
They took us one at a time into the into the house.
And they had us sit down.
Drink? Water? [Loney.]
I remember thinking there's no way I want your f-ing water.
But I just said "Yeah.
Thank you.
I would like a glass of water.
" But Tom kinda sat with his leg up like this.
In Arabic culture, you never expose the sole of your shoe to somebody.
That's not a done thing.
[man speaking Arabic.]
[man shouting in Arabic.]
[Loney.]
Tom holds his leg so that he can't knock it down.
[men speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
And then Tom sort of put it down.
"I'm gonna do it when I'm good and ready" kind of thing.
[inhales deeply.]
Which is Which is kind of cool, in a way.
I mean, it's an expression of nonviolent resistance, an expression of, like, you know It's kind of like, "F you.
" The first call we made was to a contact at the UN to say, you know, essentially, "Look, here's what's happened.
" This was a person who knew us well.
We're kind of struggling with "What should we do here, exactly?" And their advice was, "Call the embassies of all these people who've been kidnapped.
Call them, now.
" [Dan O'Shea.]
The report came in that there'd been a major kidnapping, and it involved an American, a Brit, two Canadians.
So it obviously became our number one priority case.
[Stewart Henderson.]
I got word two Canadians had been kidnapped.
And the British ambassador had said, "We are putting together a task force.
We have people coming from London.
I assume that you will be having people coming from Ottawa.
" I said, "Yes, I assume we will.
" - [doorbell rings.]
- [dog barking.]
[door opens.]
[chuckles.]
[Henderson.]
Good grief.
- My, my! My God! - [Gordon Black.]
Ten years! I remember when we got the call, it was about 2:30 in the afternoon.
"We're going.
You've a plane that leaves tonight.
" And it was on to the Herc and into Baghdad.
I remember the American loadmasters coming up and as the ramp comes down, two of them are standing there and one says, "Ah, finally, - the Canadians have arrived in the war.
" - [chuckles.]
Looking around, it was like a scene out of M.
A.
S.
H.
Helicopters all over the place.
There was no doubt that we weren't in Ottawa anymore.
[Loney.]
We were put in chairs with our knees up against the wall in front of us.
It was probably only an hour.
It felt like a hundred years.
Every second was like an outrage.
It was intolerable to be in this situation.
[sighs heavily.]
And then we hear this reading of this piece of paper.
[man reading in Arabic.]
[Loney.]
We had this sheet of paper that was written in English and Arabic that explained who Christian Peacemaker Teams was and why we were there and what our purpose was.
I've got to use my voice.
I've got to talk.
I've got to somehow try to initiate some kind of relationship.
What am I gonna say? Ah, that sheet of paper.
May I ask a question? Do you read our paper? [man.]
I read the paper.
We are not terrorists.
We are not al-Qaeda.
We are fighting for Iraqi freedom.
Oh, okay.
Well, well we are fighting for Iraqi freedom, too.
There are many people against the war.
And we are here to tell about this and the more people that know, It will make the politicians change their mind.
And he said, "Oh Well, do you know any congressmen?" "Uh, no, sorry we don't know any congressmen.
" "What good does this do? What good does this do?" He showed us a picture, and I could see if I looked down the blindfold.
"These are my sister's children.
Zanip, Noor, Mohammed and Muhanid.
They are all dead.
They were killed at a checkpoint.
I died that night.
Now the only thing I can do is fight for Iraqi freedom.
" He was angry.
And then he left the room.
[Henderson.]
In a hostage situation like that, in a war zone, we have a duty of care to citizens.
As the British do, as the Americans do, we have a constant responsibility.
I don't think there was any hesitation.
It was, "This is a problem.
We have to resolve it.
We go into this sort of mode.
" The investigation began right away with basically anything related to the mosque where the kidnapping took place, to find out if there were any leads.
[O'Shea.]
There was a kidnapping ring, a ring we were already tracking, that had a direct association with the Mother of All Battles mosque, and in particular, the Association of Muslim Scholars.
[Henderson.]
Muslim Scholars Association it sounds very nice.
Very nice, almost academic, very theological tone.
But, in fact, it was a power broker, a group of power brokers.
I will not go as far as to say they were thugs, although certainly many thugs were a part of it.
They were connected with one of the former regime elements, a group called the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades, that was one of the many groups that were part of the factions fighting in the insurgency.
[man speaking Arabic.]
[O'Shea.]
They could be just as malicious and deadly and evil as al-Qaeda when they wanted to be.
And I'll give you an example.
Margaret Hassan was an Irish woman who married an Iraqi.
Beautiful woman, by every measure.
She lived the fourth pillar of Islam, which is zakat or giving alms to the poor.
She was the director of CARE International.
She literally devoted her life to the Iraqis in the slums of Baghdad.
She was against the invasion, vocally against the invasion.
Please help me.
[O'Shea.]
And yet, she was targeted.
She was kidnapped.
She pleaded for her life on these videos.
And what do they do? [inaudible.]
They shot her in the back of the head.
[video camera beeping.]
[men chattering indistinctly.]
[Loney.]
There was a guy, we called him Videoman.
He was the videographer.
He was a chilling character, dark and scary.
There seemed to be a lot of discussion about how the camera should work.
They were asking, "Which one of you is American? Which one British? Which one of you is Italian?" "We don't have any Italians here.
" It was just this impression of chaos.
It's like, "Who are these people?" [Henderson.]
The demands being made were over the top.
The demand was that the American and British coalition forces basically quit Iraq.
It's simply nonsensical.
I mean, it doesn't matter who you are, it is nonsensical.
So what's the sense of making a demand like that? We call that an outrageous demand.
And outrageous demands are made by people who know they're outrageous and know that there's absolutely no way that that demand is gonna be met, which gave us serious concern.
[Henderson.]
If you don't do this, the hostages will be executed in a couple of weeks.
[O'Shea.]
It was a concern, and Tom Fox was more of an obvious target as an American, and I think the insurgents knew that he had been a Marine.
Believe it or not, he was in the Marine Corps band in Washington, DC, for 20 years.
[military drums playing.]
[Loney.]
He played the clarinet, playing at all the events for the president.
[band playing.]
When 9/11 happened, as a Quaker, he needed to respond.
He made this decision to join CP and for him, it was Iraq, that's where he needed to be.
At the beginning stages of the captivity, he was just strong.
He was like this anchor of courage, in a way.
[man screaming.]
[chain rattling.]
There was another man in the house.
And we could hear him begging, whimpering, screaming - [muffled screaming.]
- chain, dog barking.
[dog barking.]
And we could hear this man with a gag struggling.
Struggling, fighting.
Trying to get away.
Fighting for his life.
And he's being carried downstairs and you could hear his body struggling and breath and I can hear this.
And I'm I'm thinking, "What do I do? Should I not intervene?" [muffled screaming continues.]
I could have got up from the chair.
I could have gone out into the hallway.
I could have said, "laa haram.
" "No, this is," you know I could have [inhales.]
tried to push them away from that man.
I I just sat in my chair.
He was most certainly killed.
I know that I'm no stronger morally than anyone else.
I know that I'm willing to sit and let someone be carried past me and not intervene.
And then there was another video with Harmeet and I.
It was very bizarre.
They had grapes for us to eat and cookies, and there was pop.
Videoman put this jacket on me.
It was a very odd color.
[laughs.]
It was And it was full of cologne.
People asked me, "What were you wearing?" [laughs.]
"What was that jacket you were wearing?" It was clear that Harmeet and I were in a different category as Canadians than Tom and Norman were as American and British.
They pulled out these jumpsuits for Tom and Norman.
[laughs.]
Norman was a bit outraged.
"We are not prisoners of war.
We are not prisoners of war.
" [laughs.]
I was like "Norman, just put the jumpsuit on.
" [laughing.]
I loved that.
They wanted to dishevel my hair so that I looked more desperate than I was and I said, "No, I've got my dignity.
You jolly well leave my hair alone", which they did.
I'm a friend of Iraq.
I have been opposed to this war, Mr.
Blair's war, since the very beginning.
But I ask him now and the British government to work for my release and the release of the Iraqi people from oppression.
I plead for my release from captivity, and I also plead for release from captivity of all the people of Iraq.
[Black.]
We saw the British and American hostage actually in chains, and certainly that sent us a clear message.
Al-Qaeda and other groups would put American and Western, British hostages, in orange jumpsuits before they beheaded them and basically would say, "You have hostages.
We have hostages.
You put 'em in orange jumpsuits.
We put yours in orange jumpsuits.
This is the fate for you, which is a beheading.
" So with the Christian Peacemaker Team, when they were paraded out in orange jumpsuits, that told us, "Oh, my God, the next video is gonna be an execution video.
" [Loney.]
Medicine Man came in, said [Medicine Man.]
British and American.
Different category.
We negotiate for you separately.
[Loney.]
"We're going to separate you.
" We didn't know what that meant.
They took them in handcuffs one at a time and Tom said, "Be strong.
" Uh, it was the last thing Which was It was a very helpful thing to say in that moment.
[woman.]
I'm the daughter of Tom Fox.
My father has made a choice to travel to Iraq and listen to those who are not heard.
He meets with families that are missing loved ones.
He has spent most of his time in Iraq trying to free detainees.
He is my support and my guide, [voice breaking.]
and I need him safe with me again.
[sniffles.]
I will continue to hold him and everyone that he is with in the light and pray for a peaceful resolution.
[sniffling.]
Please let him go.
Let him go.
[sobbing.]
The execution deadline for the four aid workers, including one American, is fast approaching.
Aneesh Raman joins us now live from Baghdad.
Aneesh, what is the latest that is being said about this case, if anything? Nothing essentially, Jim.
We are just hours away from that deadline given by the group, who, for now two weeks, have had four Western aid workers [Henderson.]
We were looking at the clock, thinking, "Okay, how many hours do we have? How many days do we have? What's going to happen to these people?" And then the deadline passed and nothing was heard.
[Loney.]
Medicine Man came in and said, "Do you want to see Tom and Norman?" And we said, "Yes.
" "Okay, we take you.
We take you in the boot of the car one at a time.
" They said, "Don't say anything or we kill you.
" I was brought into this room and I turned to look.
I was so happy, like "Wow!" Like "Wow, it's really good to see you guys.
" There was no reaction.
They were just sitting there.
They were, "Oh, we thought you were released.
" I said, "I wish.
" And They looked just so sad and depressed.
And like, "Oh, my God.
Is that how I look? Like, do we Is that how we look, really, like Is that what's happened to us in two weeks?" That night, they had us sleeping on the floor in the living room.
[man shouting in Arabic.]
[in English.]
No escape! No escape! [Loney.]
He punched me in the chest.
"You are trying to escape.
No.
No escape.
" They put this chain around Tom's wrist and then they locked it to the couch.
I was so angry.
We're not animals that you can just chain us, like some kind of a dog.
That was the beginning of the whole rest of captivity.
Four men on this length of chain.
[man.]
The British government's policy on negotiating with kidnappers and on ransoms is well-known and very clear.
However, as we have said in the past, if the hostage takers want to make contact with the British government, we stand ready to hear what they have to say.
[Henderson.]
We waited for demands.
And we waited, and we waited, and we waited.
There was nothing coming from the kidnappers.
There was nothing direct.
There were no rumors.
Where's the information? How can we analyze anything if there's no information? How can we chase down evidence if there's no evidence to chase? We were a bit dumbfounded.
What happened? Where are these people? Why don't we know? [O'Shea.]
We didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but there was a weapon of mass effect, and that was kidnapping.
And it took us a long time to realize just how strategically effective the kidnappings were.
Number one, the propaganda value.
You grab a hostage, it's on the news.
The real tragedy is that the people that suffered the most were the Iraqi people themselves.
Between 7,500 and 10,000 a year kidnapped.
It was a real palpable fear.
It really discredited this notion that we were bringing security and stability to Iraq.
Then, the ransoms that were generated In a given year, more than $100 million was raised.
Ultimately funding more terrorism, more kidnappings, so it really fed the system.
It's I think, the worst form of terrorism because you have a single incident where people are killed.
That's the tragedy.
You move on with your lives.
But when it's a kidnapping and it can last for weeks, months and sometimes years that goes on indefinitely.
[Loney.]
Here it is.
it's amazing how much power this little device had over our lives.
Interestingly the guards never cranked them down on us tightly.
That is sort of a kindness.
It would have been very easy for them to inflict a lot of pain on us just with this thing.
But the boredom was excruciating.
We were just sitting in chairs.
There was nothing to read, there was no radio.
There was nothing.
Sometimes I felt like I was crawling on my hands and knees just to get through five minutes.
It's like being in a thousand-degree furnace.
Time was just excruciating to be in.
My instinct was that the only hope that we had would be through relationship with the captors.
Giving names is a very powerful thing.
Our name that we gave to them, it was our way of being in relationship with them.
Medicine Man was the link to the hierarchy, so he would come and go.
We called him Medicine Man because Norman has high blood pressure.
He brought, like, a 120-day supply.
It was like, "Oh, my God.
" It was very disheartening.
Junior was the youngest.
He was from Fallujah.
He was a 24-year-old man going on 12 years old.
He was very erratic.
He would be singing us Arabic pop songs one day and then pointing a gun at our heads the next.
He hated Tom.
And then there was Nephew.
We didn't see him very often.
He'd kinda poke his head in the door and then disappear.
He'd just look in a bit and then he'd move.
And it was like, "Oh, is he like a captor-in-training or something?" I think he'd lost his job.
The only job he could get was [laughs.]
was being a minder of hostages.
[gunfire.]
[Loney.]
From their point of view, they were holy warriors of God, enacting a sacred duty to protect their homes, their families from the invading army.
This Fallujah! This Fallujah! "This Fallujah! This Fallujah!" It was like a battle cry.
[speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
His home had been bombed.
His parents, his sister, his best friend and his fiancée were all killed.
[speaking Arabic.]
[in English.]
All dead.
All dead! And I asked him, "Well, what would you be doing if there hadn't been a war? Your house had not been bombed?" He said he made this sound [makes clicking noise.]
He said, "I would be helping my father in the market".
He'd be riding a donkey, transporting something to the market.
- [man speaking Arabic on TV.]
- [men laughing.]
[Norman Kember.]
They took us into the living room, put the television on and put a film in.
[man.]
Nicolas Cage [Kember.]
I think they wanted the company as much as we did.
[laughs.]
I think they were pretty bored.
There was this movie called Con Air.
One of the prisoners, he's got embedded a piece of wire in his hand here, and he's like He pulls it out.
[grunts quietly.]
So then he sticks it in the little hole of the handcuff, and he springs it open.
And we think, "Oh, it's Hollywood.
It's so fake.
" But that image stayed in my brain.
[woman.]
Christian Peacemaker Teams remain very disturbed by the abduction of our teammates.
We pray that those who hold them will host them with the grace that so many of us in CP have received as guests in Iraq.
As he and our family have previously stated, my father is not willing to sacrifice his dedication to the Iraqi people for any armed assistance from the US government.
[O'Shea.]
The Christian Peacemaker continued to reiterate, quote, "We don't want evil men with guns to try and rescue Tom or the other Christian Peacemaker Teams.
" And they were referring to American or British soldiers as "evil men with guns," and they said that to us.
You know, I was sitting in the room when they said that to me.
We met with them and just said, "Look, you know, we're against any raids, anything that's going to put people in danger.
This is our stance.
We've made that very clear from early onset.
" Only guys like me with guns coming in is the only option that Tom Fox and the others are gonna have to come home.
They went so far to say that Tom Fox would jump up if the hostage-rescue team came in the room, that he would jump up and put his body between himself and the rescuers and protect his kidnappers.
[speaking Arabic.]
[laughing.]
[Loney.]
The captors were just getting a little bit more sloppy in their habits with us.
I remember Junior put the gun under his pillow where he was sleeping, and he walked away.
And I mean, the bed was, like I was just a few feet away.
I could easily have just turned and grabbed that gun.
Wow.
I don't really know how to use a gun.
I don't know if it's loaded or not.
Am I prepared, really, to kill if I take that gun? For me, pacifism meant the limit was that I would not kill.
I would not kill to have my freedom back.
[Kember.]
The main difficulty was this business of being handcuffed day and night, together.
You couldn't roll over, or you only had to roll over together.
[mosquito buzzing.]
[buzzing continues.]
Harmeet are you asleep? [Harmeet.]
Yes.
[Loney.]
You had to ask permission.
"Oh, Harmeet, can I use my hand for a second 'cause I'm trying to get that mosquito?" Of course I could never get it, so then it was just like [inhales deeply.]
"All right, well, I guess I'm feeding mosquitos.
" Winter was coming.
It was cold.
And all I had was the shirt I was wearing and that was it.
[plastic bag rustling.]
- Trousers.
- Ah, Jesus.
[Loney.]
One of the guards said, "You can have these clothes.
" [chattering.]
In one of the soles it was sort of a three quarters of an inch little tack.
And I'm like, "Whoa, remember that movie? Maybe we should try it.
" And, "No, no, no.
" And then we just decided to try it.
And actually, unbelievably, it works.
[laughing.]
It's a very simple mechanism.
There's just a little spring and if you lift it, it'll just release, like magic.
That little nail became the instrument of grace, we called it.
I remember that first night of having my hands free.
I could pull the blanket up right under my chin and tuck it under my shoulders, and it felt so good.
And I could I could, like, put my hands under my chin.
It felt so good.
It was like wow.
[man chanting prayer.]
Then we had to make sure that we we locked ourselves back up in the morning, before they came upstairs.
It was just It was the most bizarre thing, like, "Okay, I guess we'd better lock up again.
" Like, we're locking ourselves up.
Like, it was just It would have been so fantastic to escape.
It would have been just such a buzz.
But then if we unlocked, it was only Harmeet and I that could actually be physically free.
So what would happen to Tom and Norman? They would most certainly be punished for our escape.
I couldn't live with that.
[static crackling.]
[indistinct chatter.]
[Henderson.]
The best source of information, of course, was listening to cell phone chatter.
I really can't talk much about phones.
[Henderson.]
By 2005, everybody had a mobile phone.
By the time I got there, it was normal.
I mean, I was given four when I arrived.
I mean, everyone knows you can track by a phone.
There was capability that we had, but nothing that even ten years later, I should go into.
[Kember.]
They all had mobile phones that they kept in touch, I suppose, with Medicine Man to know what was going on.
The cell phones became their flashlight when they'd come in.
[Black.]
The second someone was turning on a cell phone, then we were aware of it.
Over time, you start to identify the groups that are involved.
We would examine the type of communication that was going on, and say, "You know what, if this person X here wasn't there who would person Y then have to contact?" So then you employ the forces to go out and detain the person X and, you know, and hold them for the Iraqi police.
While they're being interviewed, we look for the communications between Y and who the new person is.
And that is how, over time, you start to identify the groups that are involved and the leaders.
We were able to target, more closely and more closely, specific cell phone numbers, specific operators, speakers, conversations.
And we would narrow it down from perhaps 2,000 names to 1,800 names, to 1,500 names.
The net would get narrower and narrower and narrower.
[sighs.]
There was a lot more activity.
Medicine Man was coming more often.
And he was stressed.
[Kember.]
I remember Medicine Man saying to us, you know, that they've just arrested one of our group, and we're in real danger, you know.
I remember saying to him, "Well, there's no need for you to be in any danger whatever, [laughing.]
you just let us go, the danger will be passed.
" But he didn't seem to see the funny side of that.
[Loney.]
They started to say that there had been a prisoner exchange.
The Americans would not negotiate for money, but the British and the Canadians would.
450 prisoners released for Tom.
"So we are preparing the four of you for your release.
We will take you one at a time in the boot of the car.
We will start with Tom, then Norman, then Jim, then Harmeet.
" And then we take you to the mosque and you are released.
[Loney.]
It seemed like specific detail.
And Tom was like really he was really confident.
"This makes sense, and this is good.
I think we're really We're almost there and" It felt that we were in the endgame, we're in the end time.
And then it was Junior, he was all dressed up.
He was very nice to Tom, and he said, "Okay, Tom, you have to come now, and you have to get your stuff.
" Where is your bag? [Loney.]
They handcuffed his hands behind his back.
I didn't like it.
You're so helpless like that.
They led him away.
And then they said "We will come for you.
One by one, we will come for you.
" [inhales.]
So we waited and waited It got dark.
And it was Harmeet who named it very succinctly, he said, "Tom has been separated from us.
I don't know why or what it means, but He's been separated.
" I was never optimistic.
I mean, 55-60% of most Western kidnappings end in either an execution video or a body being recovered, or nothing.
There was no place in history where the kidnapping odds were this bad.
We got a call from the US military, essentially telling us that they had found a body, that they suspicioned to be Tom.
It was wrapped in blankets near a railroad track in a you know, in a part of Baghdad a bit far away from us.
And It was It was, you know, the worst had happened.
What we had feared had happened.
And we were very concerned about the other three.
I can see that picture.
I can see those pictures.
It's not the first autopsy picture I've seen.
I've seen others, but I can see his pictures.
It seemed that he was taken out to a site.
People went behind him.
He was told to run.
And then he was shot several times with a Kalashnikov.
[man speaking Arabic on TV.]
[man continues speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
The news came on, and I remember there were pictures of Norman and Harmeet and I and then a really a long close-up of Tom.
[man continues speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
And then a road.
And, like, a spot on the road.
We said, "Why Tom on television?" "Oh, they make some special about you.
Each of you a different night is a special.
Tonight is Tom.
Tomorrow night it will be Doctor, tomorrow night it will be Jim.
" So we knew that he was lying.
The Christian Peacemaker's Team released a statement about 30 minutes ago.
"In response to Tom's passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done.
In Tom's own words, 'We reject violence to punish anyone.
We ask that there be no retaliation on relatives or property.
We forgive those who consider us their enemies.
'" We certainly didn't condone Tom's death, but it Our feeling under our Christian faith is that people are forgiven for sins, even really horrible sins.
and that while maybe we couldn't forgive them, we believed in a God that could.
Kumbaya, world peace will never happen.
The reality in the world that people don't want to accept is that there's evil men on the planet.
And the only thing that stops an evil man with a gun is a good man with a gun.
After Tom's death, it became the number one driving mission.
Special operations units going after targets every night.
It's called the ops/intel fusion.
Intelligence drives operations and then operations brings you more intelligence and drives future operations.
So it almost became a coordinated, orchestrated ballet, if you will, between the two units going after specific target sets every night.
Our guys could go anywhere, at any time.
We owned the night.
[Henderson.]
There were, shall we say, parallel activities by special forces.
[Black.]
Everyone was so focused on trying to find that one piece of information that would break this wide open for us.
[O'Shea.]
To do a hostage-rescue mission, you need to know exactly where that hostage is.
You need to know that ten-digit grid.
So it's not just at a house on the block You need to know what room in that house.
To send my brothers-in-arms in harm's way to try and rescue people, it has to be surgical.
[Loney.]
Norman wasn't really doing very well.
I don't know what it was, I just had this feeling We've got to get out of here.
I don't think this is going to end right.
This is not going to end well.
[Black.]
Then we got information.
We learned that there was a key individual making decisions relating to three other people.
So, that individual became the focus of all our efforts.
This individual was located.
And the individual was interviewed and interrogated and made a decision in his own best interest to cooperate.
He was told, no uncertain terms, his information better be accurate.
Better be no threat to those who are going to rescue the hostages.
From that time on, it was a mad scramble to prepare for a military assault.
We need to believe in miracles and so that's what we're choosing to do right now.
[O'Shea.]
The Christian Peacemaker were very adamant, saying, "We're not going to give you any information, we don't want a hostage-rescue mission launched.
" They were very adamant that, you know, that our team knew the threat, they knew the risk, that they don't want any rescue mission launched.
It was difficult because we were coming from different places and with different motives.
Our fear was that there would be people killed or injured.
[Henderson.]
My duty was to go and do whatever possible to try to rescue these people.
And the fact that somebody in Canada or somebody else, or even a family member says, "We don't want you to do this," I'm sorry, I really am sorry, but it is not within your remit to say that.
These are Canadian citizens, passport holders, who, whether they like it or not, are subject to our beneficial approach to trying to save their lives.
[Black.]
We know either we're going to get them or they're going to die.
[O'Shea.]
It takes nothing for kidnappers to kill the hostages.
So, a hostage-rescue mission is a no-fail mission.
Abide with me Fast falls the eventide The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide - [singing continues.]
- Wake up.
Something's happening.
[shushing.]
[soldier.]
Harmeet? Harmeet? [pounding on door.]
Open the door! Open the door! [pounding continues.]
- Mr.
Kember? - Yes, I'm here.
[Loney.]
There was no sky for four months, and that blue was just amazing.
And I I could feel the breeze on my face.
[inhales.]
And I just I wanted to stop everything and just feel that.
It was a bright, bright, bright, sunny morning in Baghdad.
[camera shutters clicking.]
[Nash.]
We were very glad that our folks were back with us.
We were extremely glad no one was hurt during that.
That had been our fear.
All hostages came home, all rescuers came home.
No harm, no foul.
[Henderson.]
I remember looking at them thinking, "I know you.
I know everything about you.
Both of you, I have been looking at your faces for those 118 days that you have been chained up.
And I'm not making a comparison, but for those 118 days that you were chained up, I have been looking at your photographs.
And I'm so happy that I'm here to see you.
" I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional now, but ten years later and it still touches.
[Kember.]
I mean, I always feel I'm compromised having gone as a peacemaker and being released by the most aggressive of the British forces.
But I'm grateful for it because I've had another ten years of enjoyable life since they came up the stairs.
But there we are there.
One lives with compromise.
[camera shutters clicking.]
Good morning.
We unconditionally forgive our captors for abducting and holding us.
Should those who have been charged with holding us hostage be brought to trial and convicted, we ask that they be granted all possible leniency.
[indistinct.]
[Henderson.]
I did not think it was right for those who have been kidnapped to refuse to testify.
Because they were not being asked to condemn, they were not being asked to either ask for capital punishment or argue against it, they were simply being asked to identify people who had kidnapped them.
Kidnapping is a death penalty offense in Iraq.
Like, are they gonna Are they going to be killed if we testify? Like There's been enough death.
Like We don't need any more death.
We don't need any more people killed.
Very rarely do you feel like you're spit in the face by the people you've put in a lot of time and effort and risked your life for.
And that one was one that didn't sit well with me for a long time.
You know, I was raised a Christian as well and of the understanding that the greatest evil in the world is when good men see evil and do nothing about it.
I couldn't live with myself if I felt that I didn't do everything in my power to try and help stop the Iraqi crisis.
That was our mission, helping good men with guns go put bad men with guns out of business permanently.
[Loney.]
You know, some men with guns came and took us, and then some bigger men with bigger guns came and took them.
But the gun the gun's still in charge.
I am immensely grateful, and I'm here to tell you the story that I may not otherwise because of that intervention.
Tom's story died with him.
This story could have died with me.
[dog barking.]
But the bigger story, we're all part of the bigger story, and that bigger story is about how do we live as brothers and sisters without killing each other? [Henderson.]
It's nice to see you again.
[Loney.]
It's nice to see you.
[Loney.]
It's been [chuckles.]
[Henderson.]
It's been ten years.
[Loney.]
Almost exactly ten years.
And Fifteen days.
[somber music playing.]
[man.]
He was taken out to a site.
He was told to kneel down.
People went behind him.
He was told to run.
And then, he was shot several times with a Kalashnikov.
And it wasn't done on camera.
It wasn't done for propaganda reasons.
It was pure malevolence.
Pure violence.
[man.]
Yeah I often I don't anymore.
I used to think about that moment.
I used to think about "Could we? Should we? What if we had you know did everything we could to get out of that? To fight.
" These are the only things I have, in a way, that are the physical witness to that time period.
This box here includes the clothing that I wore in those 118 days.
So these are the These are the pants.
[sniffs.]
Like, you could see the war clouds coming across the horizon.
[shouting.]
And there was a global movement to try to stop this war from coming.
[shouting.]
[George W.
Bush.]
Major combat operations have ended.
In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
[cheering and applause.]
[motorcycle revving.]
[man.]
I was involved with the invasion of Iraq.
I was actually in Iraq days after Baghdad fell.
For the most part, Iraq was welcoming.
And, in fact, it was We were greeted as liberators.
I was given thumbs up signs and "USA Number 1" from many of the locals on the ground in Baghdad.
They were very happy to have Saddam Hussein displaced.
I come back less than a year later, in July of 2004, into a very different environment.
[explosion.]
[gunfire.]
The insurgency was starting to act up and it broke loose.
[huffing.]
[man.]
I joined the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs in 1980 and then ended up in Baghdad from 2005 to 2006.
Things were going as badly as many of us had thought might happen when the invasion took place two years earlier.
The death rate in Baghdad was incredible.
It was in the thousands per month.
Iraqi on Iraqi.
Never mind the coalition forces and the casualties that they were both inflicting and taking.
[woman.]
For those of us who were there, it was a sense that If we really felt this strongly about it, it wasn't enough to write letters to George Bush.
You had to do something else.
You have to walk the talk.
And that's how I ended up in Baghdad for three years.
[James Loney.]
I would call Christian Peacemaker Teams an experiment in nonviolence.
How do we take the passivity out of pacifism? If we were prepared to take the same risks that soldiers are prepared to take, could we have an impact using the tools of nonviolence? The work we ended up doing in Iraq was essentially to be liaisoning between families who'd had family members or friends detained by coalition forces.
Come on.
Get up! [Maxine Nash.]
Simply to help them find those loved ones in prison.
We were living in an apartment in Baghdad.
People in the military discovered we were living just in this apartment in Baghdad.
[chuckles.]
And they were terribly shocked to find just civilians living in an apartment in Baghdad.
They were a bunch of do-gooders in a very bad part of the world, doing very foolish things, in my humble opinion, and they were extraordinarily naïve to the point of They were They were naïve, and their stupidity put lives at risk for a lot of people, including their own.
[Nash.]
We knew that they felt that we shouldn't have been there, that we put people at risk.
We felt from the outset that US military shouldn't have been there and that they were putting people at risk, and the whole argument could have been flipped.
[alarm blaring.]
CPT offered delegations to Iraq for people who were interested in seeing the situation for themselves firsthand.
Jim was a delegation leader coming with the delegation.
Harmeet and Norman Kember had simply signed up to come to Iraq to see for themselves what the situation was.
[chanting.]
[man.]
I was one of the million who turned out to object to the Iraq War.
And I wondered if there was anything else one could do, and then I learned about the Christian Peacemaker Team.
I thought it would be interesting to see how they worked.
So I only went out to Iraq for ten days, I think it was just to discover what they were up to, what they actually did in Iraq.
We had appointments set up with a Shia cleric and with the Muslim Scholars Association, trying to give them both sides of the picture as far as Shia and Sunni Muslims and how that played out in Iraq.
The delegation had gone off in the morning with a driver and a translator and a team member, and it happened to be Tom Fox.
Tom was a regular core-team member.
Essentially, this was his job.
This was what he signed up for, and he knew that the unexpected could happen.
[horns honking.]
The original plan had been for them to come back to the apartment, trade team member for the afternoon meeting, but they were running late 'cause traffic in Baghdad was horrible.
So they didn't come back and Tom ended up staying with them for the Muslim Scholars Association in the afternoon.
[Loney.]
Well, my understanding of the Muslim Scholars Association is that it had links to the insurgency.
Going to talk to a very hardline Sunni group about trying to ease the problems in Iraq is probably not the wisest thing.
It's a bit like going to see Al Capone in Chicago in the '30s to see if, you know, "Can't you do something about the crime in this city?" "Yes, I can control it all.
You know, that's what I do.
" [Loney.]
We got there, and there was this mosque that Saddam built, called the Mother of All Battles, and the minarets were designed to look like scud missiles.
It's like a vast compound with this big, giant parking lot Empty.
Tom made some comment about somebody kind of observing us, and it gave him a bad feeling.
And then we went in to the reception area.
We had to show our passports.
Which nobody, other than Like, no one asked us to see our passports.
We had to show them.
And I was like [inhales.]
I didn't like that.
So we met with this man.
I don't remember his name, but he was checking his watch.
And then the meeting was over in 20 minutes.
Like, that was it, time to go.
We tried to ask him questions and he just, like had kind of a flat, no-response answer, and we realized, "Well, I guess our meeting's over.
" We were in a van, and they were turning out into the street.
Sort of a lonely, on the edge kind of on the edge of a neighborhood, sort of.
A white car pulled in really in front, and then it started slowing down and put on the brakes.
"What the hell?" Like, "What's going on?" Four guys, they go right away to the driver and translator in the front, and they pull them out.
And they had guns.
This is not good.
This is not good.
[Nash.]
I remember I was doing laundry that day.
Hanging laundry on our roof.
We got a call from our translator, who had been with the group, to say that they had been kidnapped.
"Oh, you're joking? Really, this, you know Don't do that.
Don't joke with us.
" But he was very serious.
[Loney.]
So then it was surreal because we were in gridlock.
We're stopped in traffic.
[horns honking.]
There was, like, a car, like like three feet away from me.
These women in this car and [inhales.]
We are being taken, and you are three feet away from us.
Do I get your attention? Do I shout? Do I try to get out? I don't know what's gonna happen.
Is there gonna be gunfire? Like, you know [stammers.]
What's I just sat there.
And kinda observed it.
They took us one at a time into the into the house.
And they had us sit down.
Drink? Water? [Loney.]
I remember thinking there's no way I want your f-ing water.
But I just said "Yeah.
Thank you.
I would like a glass of water.
" But Tom kinda sat with his leg up like this.
In Arabic culture, you never expose the sole of your shoe to somebody.
That's not a done thing.
[man speaking Arabic.]
[man shouting in Arabic.]
[Loney.]
Tom holds his leg so that he can't knock it down.
[men speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
And then Tom sort of put it down.
"I'm gonna do it when I'm good and ready" kind of thing.
[inhales deeply.]
Which is Which is kind of cool, in a way.
I mean, it's an expression of nonviolent resistance, an expression of, like, you know It's kind of like, "F you.
" The first call we made was to a contact at the UN to say, you know, essentially, "Look, here's what's happened.
" This was a person who knew us well.
We're kind of struggling with "What should we do here, exactly?" And their advice was, "Call the embassies of all these people who've been kidnapped.
Call them, now.
" [Dan O'Shea.]
The report came in that there'd been a major kidnapping, and it involved an American, a Brit, two Canadians.
So it obviously became our number one priority case.
[Stewart Henderson.]
I got word two Canadians had been kidnapped.
And the British ambassador had said, "We are putting together a task force.
We have people coming from London.
I assume that you will be having people coming from Ottawa.
" I said, "Yes, I assume we will.
" - [doorbell rings.]
- [dog barking.]
[door opens.]
[chuckles.]
[Henderson.]
Good grief.
- My, my! My God! - [Gordon Black.]
Ten years! I remember when we got the call, it was about 2:30 in the afternoon.
"We're going.
You've a plane that leaves tonight.
" And it was on to the Herc and into Baghdad.
I remember the American loadmasters coming up and as the ramp comes down, two of them are standing there and one says, "Ah, finally, - the Canadians have arrived in the war.
" - [chuckles.]
Looking around, it was like a scene out of M.
A.
S.
H.
Helicopters all over the place.
There was no doubt that we weren't in Ottawa anymore.
[Loney.]
We were put in chairs with our knees up against the wall in front of us.
It was probably only an hour.
It felt like a hundred years.
Every second was like an outrage.
It was intolerable to be in this situation.
[sighs heavily.]
And then we hear this reading of this piece of paper.
[man reading in Arabic.]
[Loney.]
We had this sheet of paper that was written in English and Arabic that explained who Christian Peacemaker Teams was and why we were there and what our purpose was.
I've got to use my voice.
I've got to talk.
I've got to somehow try to initiate some kind of relationship.
What am I gonna say? Ah, that sheet of paper.
May I ask a question? Do you read our paper? [man.]
I read the paper.
We are not terrorists.
We are not al-Qaeda.
We are fighting for Iraqi freedom.
Oh, okay.
Well, well we are fighting for Iraqi freedom, too.
There are many people against the war.
And we are here to tell about this and the more people that know, It will make the politicians change their mind.
And he said, "Oh Well, do you know any congressmen?" "Uh, no, sorry we don't know any congressmen.
" "What good does this do? What good does this do?" He showed us a picture, and I could see if I looked down the blindfold.
"These are my sister's children.
Zanip, Noor, Mohammed and Muhanid.
They are all dead.
They were killed at a checkpoint.
I died that night.
Now the only thing I can do is fight for Iraqi freedom.
" He was angry.
And then he left the room.
[Henderson.]
In a hostage situation like that, in a war zone, we have a duty of care to citizens.
As the British do, as the Americans do, we have a constant responsibility.
I don't think there was any hesitation.
It was, "This is a problem.
We have to resolve it.
We go into this sort of mode.
" The investigation began right away with basically anything related to the mosque where the kidnapping took place, to find out if there were any leads.
[O'Shea.]
There was a kidnapping ring, a ring we were already tracking, that had a direct association with the Mother of All Battles mosque, and in particular, the Association of Muslim Scholars.
[Henderson.]
Muslim Scholars Association it sounds very nice.
Very nice, almost academic, very theological tone.
But, in fact, it was a power broker, a group of power brokers.
I will not go as far as to say they were thugs, although certainly many thugs were a part of it.
They were connected with one of the former regime elements, a group called the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades, that was one of the many groups that were part of the factions fighting in the insurgency.
[man speaking Arabic.]
[O'Shea.]
They could be just as malicious and deadly and evil as al-Qaeda when they wanted to be.
And I'll give you an example.
Margaret Hassan was an Irish woman who married an Iraqi.
Beautiful woman, by every measure.
She lived the fourth pillar of Islam, which is zakat or giving alms to the poor.
She was the director of CARE International.
She literally devoted her life to the Iraqis in the slums of Baghdad.
She was against the invasion, vocally against the invasion.
Please help me.
[O'Shea.]
And yet, she was targeted.
She was kidnapped.
She pleaded for her life on these videos.
And what do they do? [inaudible.]
They shot her in the back of the head.
[video camera beeping.]
[men chattering indistinctly.]
[Loney.]
There was a guy, we called him Videoman.
He was the videographer.
He was a chilling character, dark and scary.
There seemed to be a lot of discussion about how the camera should work.
They were asking, "Which one of you is American? Which one British? Which one of you is Italian?" "We don't have any Italians here.
" It was just this impression of chaos.
It's like, "Who are these people?" [Henderson.]
The demands being made were over the top.
The demand was that the American and British coalition forces basically quit Iraq.
It's simply nonsensical.
I mean, it doesn't matter who you are, it is nonsensical.
So what's the sense of making a demand like that? We call that an outrageous demand.
And outrageous demands are made by people who know they're outrageous and know that there's absolutely no way that that demand is gonna be met, which gave us serious concern.
[Henderson.]
If you don't do this, the hostages will be executed in a couple of weeks.
[O'Shea.]
It was a concern, and Tom Fox was more of an obvious target as an American, and I think the insurgents knew that he had been a Marine.
Believe it or not, he was in the Marine Corps band in Washington, DC, for 20 years.
[military drums playing.]
[Loney.]
He played the clarinet, playing at all the events for the president.
[band playing.]
When 9/11 happened, as a Quaker, he needed to respond.
He made this decision to join CP and for him, it was Iraq, that's where he needed to be.
At the beginning stages of the captivity, he was just strong.
He was like this anchor of courage, in a way.
[man screaming.]
[chain rattling.]
There was another man in the house.
And we could hear him begging, whimpering, screaming - [muffled screaming.]
- chain, dog barking.
[dog barking.]
And we could hear this man with a gag struggling.
Struggling, fighting.
Trying to get away.
Fighting for his life.
And he's being carried downstairs and you could hear his body struggling and breath and I can hear this.
And I'm I'm thinking, "What do I do? Should I not intervene?" [muffled screaming continues.]
I could have got up from the chair.
I could have gone out into the hallway.
I could have said, "laa haram.
" "No, this is," you know I could have [inhales.]
tried to push them away from that man.
I I just sat in my chair.
He was most certainly killed.
I know that I'm no stronger morally than anyone else.
I know that I'm willing to sit and let someone be carried past me and not intervene.
And then there was another video with Harmeet and I.
It was very bizarre.
They had grapes for us to eat and cookies, and there was pop.
Videoman put this jacket on me.
It was a very odd color.
[laughs.]
It was And it was full of cologne.
People asked me, "What were you wearing?" [laughs.]
"What was that jacket you were wearing?" It was clear that Harmeet and I were in a different category as Canadians than Tom and Norman were as American and British.
They pulled out these jumpsuits for Tom and Norman.
[laughs.]
Norman was a bit outraged.
"We are not prisoners of war.
We are not prisoners of war.
" [laughs.]
I was like "Norman, just put the jumpsuit on.
" [laughing.]
I loved that.
They wanted to dishevel my hair so that I looked more desperate than I was and I said, "No, I've got my dignity.
You jolly well leave my hair alone", which they did.
I'm a friend of Iraq.
I have been opposed to this war, Mr.
Blair's war, since the very beginning.
But I ask him now and the British government to work for my release and the release of the Iraqi people from oppression.
I plead for my release from captivity, and I also plead for release from captivity of all the people of Iraq.
[Black.]
We saw the British and American hostage actually in chains, and certainly that sent us a clear message.
Al-Qaeda and other groups would put American and Western, British hostages, in orange jumpsuits before they beheaded them and basically would say, "You have hostages.
We have hostages.
You put 'em in orange jumpsuits.
We put yours in orange jumpsuits.
This is the fate for you, which is a beheading.
" So with the Christian Peacemaker Team, when they were paraded out in orange jumpsuits, that told us, "Oh, my God, the next video is gonna be an execution video.
" [Loney.]
Medicine Man came in, said [Medicine Man.]
British and American.
Different category.
We negotiate for you separately.
[Loney.]
"We're going to separate you.
" We didn't know what that meant.
They took them in handcuffs one at a time and Tom said, "Be strong.
" Uh, it was the last thing Which was It was a very helpful thing to say in that moment.
[woman.]
I'm the daughter of Tom Fox.
My father has made a choice to travel to Iraq and listen to those who are not heard.
He meets with families that are missing loved ones.
He has spent most of his time in Iraq trying to free detainees.
He is my support and my guide, [voice breaking.]
and I need him safe with me again.
[sniffles.]
I will continue to hold him and everyone that he is with in the light and pray for a peaceful resolution.
[sniffling.]
Please let him go.
Let him go.
[sobbing.]
The execution deadline for the four aid workers, including one American, is fast approaching.
Aneesh Raman joins us now live from Baghdad.
Aneesh, what is the latest that is being said about this case, if anything? Nothing essentially, Jim.
We are just hours away from that deadline given by the group, who, for now two weeks, have had four Western aid workers [Henderson.]
We were looking at the clock, thinking, "Okay, how many hours do we have? How many days do we have? What's going to happen to these people?" And then the deadline passed and nothing was heard.
[Loney.]
Medicine Man came in and said, "Do you want to see Tom and Norman?" And we said, "Yes.
" "Okay, we take you.
We take you in the boot of the car one at a time.
" They said, "Don't say anything or we kill you.
" I was brought into this room and I turned to look.
I was so happy, like "Wow!" Like "Wow, it's really good to see you guys.
" There was no reaction.
They were just sitting there.
They were, "Oh, we thought you were released.
" I said, "I wish.
" And They looked just so sad and depressed.
And like, "Oh, my God.
Is that how I look? Like, do we Is that how we look, really, like Is that what's happened to us in two weeks?" That night, they had us sleeping on the floor in the living room.
[man shouting in Arabic.]
[in English.]
No escape! No escape! [Loney.]
He punched me in the chest.
"You are trying to escape.
No.
No escape.
" They put this chain around Tom's wrist and then they locked it to the couch.
I was so angry.
We're not animals that you can just chain us, like some kind of a dog.
That was the beginning of the whole rest of captivity.
Four men on this length of chain.
[man.]
The British government's policy on negotiating with kidnappers and on ransoms is well-known and very clear.
However, as we have said in the past, if the hostage takers want to make contact with the British government, we stand ready to hear what they have to say.
[Henderson.]
We waited for demands.
And we waited, and we waited, and we waited.
There was nothing coming from the kidnappers.
There was nothing direct.
There were no rumors.
Where's the information? How can we analyze anything if there's no information? How can we chase down evidence if there's no evidence to chase? We were a bit dumbfounded.
What happened? Where are these people? Why don't we know? [O'Shea.]
We didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but there was a weapon of mass effect, and that was kidnapping.
And it took us a long time to realize just how strategically effective the kidnappings were.
Number one, the propaganda value.
You grab a hostage, it's on the news.
The real tragedy is that the people that suffered the most were the Iraqi people themselves.
Between 7,500 and 10,000 a year kidnapped.
It was a real palpable fear.
It really discredited this notion that we were bringing security and stability to Iraq.
Then, the ransoms that were generated In a given year, more than $100 million was raised.
Ultimately funding more terrorism, more kidnappings, so it really fed the system.
It's I think, the worst form of terrorism because you have a single incident where people are killed.
That's the tragedy.
You move on with your lives.
But when it's a kidnapping and it can last for weeks, months and sometimes years that goes on indefinitely.
[Loney.]
Here it is.
it's amazing how much power this little device had over our lives.
Interestingly the guards never cranked them down on us tightly.
That is sort of a kindness.
It would have been very easy for them to inflict a lot of pain on us just with this thing.
But the boredom was excruciating.
We were just sitting in chairs.
There was nothing to read, there was no radio.
There was nothing.
Sometimes I felt like I was crawling on my hands and knees just to get through five minutes.
It's like being in a thousand-degree furnace.
Time was just excruciating to be in.
My instinct was that the only hope that we had would be through relationship with the captors.
Giving names is a very powerful thing.
Our name that we gave to them, it was our way of being in relationship with them.
Medicine Man was the link to the hierarchy, so he would come and go.
We called him Medicine Man because Norman has high blood pressure.
He brought, like, a 120-day supply.
It was like, "Oh, my God.
" It was very disheartening.
Junior was the youngest.
He was from Fallujah.
He was a 24-year-old man going on 12 years old.
He was very erratic.
He would be singing us Arabic pop songs one day and then pointing a gun at our heads the next.
He hated Tom.
And then there was Nephew.
We didn't see him very often.
He'd kinda poke his head in the door and then disappear.
He'd just look in a bit and then he'd move.
And it was like, "Oh, is he like a captor-in-training or something?" I think he'd lost his job.
The only job he could get was [laughs.]
was being a minder of hostages.
[gunfire.]
[Loney.]
From their point of view, they were holy warriors of God, enacting a sacred duty to protect their homes, their families from the invading army.
This Fallujah! This Fallujah! "This Fallujah! This Fallujah!" It was like a battle cry.
[speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
His home had been bombed.
His parents, his sister, his best friend and his fiancée were all killed.
[speaking Arabic.]
[in English.]
All dead.
All dead! And I asked him, "Well, what would you be doing if there hadn't been a war? Your house had not been bombed?" He said he made this sound [makes clicking noise.]
He said, "I would be helping my father in the market".
He'd be riding a donkey, transporting something to the market.
- [man speaking Arabic on TV.]
- [men laughing.]
[Norman Kember.]
They took us into the living room, put the television on and put a film in.
[man.]
Nicolas Cage [Kember.]
I think they wanted the company as much as we did.
[laughs.]
I think they were pretty bored.
There was this movie called Con Air.
One of the prisoners, he's got embedded a piece of wire in his hand here, and he's like He pulls it out.
[grunts quietly.]
So then he sticks it in the little hole of the handcuff, and he springs it open.
And we think, "Oh, it's Hollywood.
It's so fake.
" But that image stayed in my brain.
[woman.]
Christian Peacemaker Teams remain very disturbed by the abduction of our teammates.
We pray that those who hold them will host them with the grace that so many of us in CP have received as guests in Iraq.
As he and our family have previously stated, my father is not willing to sacrifice his dedication to the Iraqi people for any armed assistance from the US government.
[O'Shea.]
The Christian Peacemaker continued to reiterate, quote, "We don't want evil men with guns to try and rescue Tom or the other Christian Peacemaker Teams.
" And they were referring to American or British soldiers as "evil men with guns," and they said that to us.
You know, I was sitting in the room when they said that to me.
We met with them and just said, "Look, you know, we're against any raids, anything that's going to put people in danger.
This is our stance.
We've made that very clear from early onset.
" Only guys like me with guns coming in is the only option that Tom Fox and the others are gonna have to come home.
They went so far to say that Tom Fox would jump up if the hostage-rescue team came in the room, that he would jump up and put his body between himself and the rescuers and protect his kidnappers.
[speaking Arabic.]
[laughing.]
[Loney.]
The captors were just getting a little bit more sloppy in their habits with us.
I remember Junior put the gun under his pillow where he was sleeping, and he walked away.
And I mean, the bed was, like I was just a few feet away.
I could easily have just turned and grabbed that gun.
Wow.
I don't really know how to use a gun.
I don't know if it's loaded or not.
Am I prepared, really, to kill if I take that gun? For me, pacifism meant the limit was that I would not kill.
I would not kill to have my freedom back.
[Kember.]
The main difficulty was this business of being handcuffed day and night, together.
You couldn't roll over, or you only had to roll over together.
[mosquito buzzing.]
[buzzing continues.]
Harmeet are you asleep? [Harmeet.]
Yes.
[Loney.]
You had to ask permission.
"Oh, Harmeet, can I use my hand for a second 'cause I'm trying to get that mosquito?" Of course I could never get it, so then it was just like [inhales deeply.]
"All right, well, I guess I'm feeding mosquitos.
" Winter was coming.
It was cold.
And all I had was the shirt I was wearing and that was it.
[plastic bag rustling.]
- Trousers.
- Ah, Jesus.
[Loney.]
One of the guards said, "You can have these clothes.
" [chattering.]
In one of the soles it was sort of a three quarters of an inch little tack.
And I'm like, "Whoa, remember that movie? Maybe we should try it.
" And, "No, no, no.
" And then we just decided to try it.
And actually, unbelievably, it works.
[laughing.]
It's a very simple mechanism.
There's just a little spring and if you lift it, it'll just release, like magic.
That little nail became the instrument of grace, we called it.
I remember that first night of having my hands free.
I could pull the blanket up right under my chin and tuck it under my shoulders, and it felt so good.
And I could I could, like, put my hands under my chin.
It felt so good.
It was like wow.
[man chanting prayer.]
Then we had to make sure that we we locked ourselves back up in the morning, before they came upstairs.
It was just It was the most bizarre thing, like, "Okay, I guess we'd better lock up again.
" Like, we're locking ourselves up.
Like, it was just It would have been so fantastic to escape.
It would have been just such a buzz.
But then if we unlocked, it was only Harmeet and I that could actually be physically free.
So what would happen to Tom and Norman? They would most certainly be punished for our escape.
I couldn't live with that.
[static crackling.]
[indistinct chatter.]
[Henderson.]
The best source of information, of course, was listening to cell phone chatter.
I really can't talk much about phones.
[Henderson.]
By 2005, everybody had a mobile phone.
By the time I got there, it was normal.
I mean, I was given four when I arrived.
I mean, everyone knows you can track by a phone.
There was capability that we had, but nothing that even ten years later, I should go into.
[Kember.]
They all had mobile phones that they kept in touch, I suppose, with Medicine Man to know what was going on.
The cell phones became their flashlight when they'd come in.
[Black.]
The second someone was turning on a cell phone, then we were aware of it.
Over time, you start to identify the groups that are involved.
We would examine the type of communication that was going on, and say, "You know what, if this person X here wasn't there who would person Y then have to contact?" So then you employ the forces to go out and detain the person X and, you know, and hold them for the Iraqi police.
While they're being interviewed, we look for the communications between Y and who the new person is.
And that is how, over time, you start to identify the groups that are involved and the leaders.
We were able to target, more closely and more closely, specific cell phone numbers, specific operators, speakers, conversations.
And we would narrow it down from perhaps 2,000 names to 1,800 names, to 1,500 names.
The net would get narrower and narrower and narrower.
[sighs.]
There was a lot more activity.
Medicine Man was coming more often.
And he was stressed.
[Kember.]
I remember Medicine Man saying to us, you know, that they've just arrested one of our group, and we're in real danger, you know.
I remember saying to him, "Well, there's no need for you to be in any danger whatever, [laughing.]
you just let us go, the danger will be passed.
" But he didn't seem to see the funny side of that.
[Loney.]
They started to say that there had been a prisoner exchange.
The Americans would not negotiate for money, but the British and the Canadians would.
450 prisoners released for Tom.
"So we are preparing the four of you for your release.
We will take you one at a time in the boot of the car.
We will start with Tom, then Norman, then Jim, then Harmeet.
" And then we take you to the mosque and you are released.
[Loney.]
It seemed like specific detail.
And Tom was like really he was really confident.
"This makes sense, and this is good.
I think we're really We're almost there and" It felt that we were in the endgame, we're in the end time.
And then it was Junior, he was all dressed up.
He was very nice to Tom, and he said, "Okay, Tom, you have to come now, and you have to get your stuff.
" Where is your bag? [Loney.]
They handcuffed his hands behind his back.
I didn't like it.
You're so helpless like that.
They led him away.
And then they said "We will come for you.
One by one, we will come for you.
" [inhales.]
So we waited and waited It got dark.
And it was Harmeet who named it very succinctly, he said, "Tom has been separated from us.
I don't know why or what it means, but He's been separated.
" I was never optimistic.
I mean, 55-60% of most Western kidnappings end in either an execution video or a body being recovered, or nothing.
There was no place in history where the kidnapping odds were this bad.
We got a call from the US military, essentially telling us that they had found a body, that they suspicioned to be Tom.
It was wrapped in blankets near a railroad track in a you know, in a part of Baghdad a bit far away from us.
And It was It was, you know, the worst had happened.
What we had feared had happened.
And we were very concerned about the other three.
I can see that picture.
I can see those pictures.
It's not the first autopsy picture I've seen.
I've seen others, but I can see his pictures.
It seemed that he was taken out to a site.
People went behind him.
He was told to run.
And then he was shot several times with a Kalashnikov.
[man speaking Arabic on TV.]
[man continues speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
The news came on, and I remember there were pictures of Norman and Harmeet and I and then a really a long close-up of Tom.
[man continues speaking Arabic.]
[Loney.]
And then a road.
And, like, a spot on the road.
We said, "Why Tom on television?" "Oh, they make some special about you.
Each of you a different night is a special.
Tonight is Tom.
Tomorrow night it will be Doctor, tomorrow night it will be Jim.
" So we knew that he was lying.
The Christian Peacemaker's Team released a statement about 30 minutes ago.
"In response to Tom's passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done.
In Tom's own words, 'We reject violence to punish anyone.
We ask that there be no retaliation on relatives or property.
We forgive those who consider us their enemies.
'" We certainly didn't condone Tom's death, but it Our feeling under our Christian faith is that people are forgiven for sins, even really horrible sins.
and that while maybe we couldn't forgive them, we believed in a God that could.
Kumbaya, world peace will never happen.
The reality in the world that people don't want to accept is that there's evil men on the planet.
And the only thing that stops an evil man with a gun is a good man with a gun.
After Tom's death, it became the number one driving mission.
Special operations units going after targets every night.
It's called the ops/intel fusion.
Intelligence drives operations and then operations brings you more intelligence and drives future operations.
So it almost became a coordinated, orchestrated ballet, if you will, between the two units going after specific target sets every night.
Our guys could go anywhere, at any time.
We owned the night.
[Henderson.]
There were, shall we say, parallel activities by special forces.
[Black.]
Everyone was so focused on trying to find that one piece of information that would break this wide open for us.
[O'Shea.]
To do a hostage-rescue mission, you need to know exactly where that hostage is.
You need to know that ten-digit grid.
So it's not just at a house on the block You need to know what room in that house.
To send my brothers-in-arms in harm's way to try and rescue people, it has to be surgical.
[Loney.]
Norman wasn't really doing very well.
I don't know what it was, I just had this feeling We've got to get out of here.
I don't think this is going to end right.
This is not going to end well.
[Black.]
Then we got information.
We learned that there was a key individual making decisions relating to three other people.
So, that individual became the focus of all our efforts.
This individual was located.
And the individual was interviewed and interrogated and made a decision in his own best interest to cooperate.
He was told, no uncertain terms, his information better be accurate.
Better be no threat to those who are going to rescue the hostages.
From that time on, it was a mad scramble to prepare for a military assault.
We need to believe in miracles and so that's what we're choosing to do right now.
[O'Shea.]
The Christian Peacemaker were very adamant, saying, "We're not going to give you any information, we don't want a hostage-rescue mission launched.
" They were very adamant that, you know, that our team knew the threat, they knew the risk, that they don't want any rescue mission launched.
It was difficult because we were coming from different places and with different motives.
Our fear was that there would be people killed or injured.
[Henderson.]
My duty was to go and do whatever possible to try to rescue these people.
And the fact that somebody in Canada or somebody else, or even a family member says, "We don't want you to do this," I'm sorry, I really am sorry, but it is not within your remit to say that.
These are Canadian citizens, passport holders, who, whether they like it or not, are subject to our beneficial approach to trying to save their lives.
[Black.]
We know either we're going to get them or they're going to die.
[O'Shea.]
It takes nothing for kidnappers to kill the hostages.
So, a hostage-rescue mission is a no-fail mission.
Abide with me Fast falls the eventide The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide - [singing continues.]
- Wake up.
Something's happening.
[shushing.]
[soldier.]
Harmeet? Harmeet? [pounding on door.]
Open the door! Open the door! [pounding continues.]
- Mr.
Kember? - Yes, I'm here.
[Loney.]
There was no sky for four months, and that blue was just amazing.
And I I could feel the breeze on my face.
[inhales.]
And I just I wanted to stop everything and just feel that.
It was a bright, bright, bright, sunny morning in Baghdad.
[camera shutters clicking.]
[Nash.]
We were very glad that our folks were back with us.
We were extremely glad no one was hurt during that.
That had been our fear.
All hostages came home, all rescuers came home.
No harm, no foul.
[Henderson.]
I remember looking at them thinking, "I know you.
I know everything about you.
Both of you, I have been looking at your faces for those 118 days that you have been chained up.
And I'm not making a comparison, but for those 118 days that you were chained up, I have been looking at your photographs.
And I'm so happy that I'm here to see you.
" I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional now, but ten years later and it still touches.
[Kember.]
I mean, I always feel I'm compromised having gone as a peacemaker and being released by the most aggressive of the British forces.
But I'm grateful for it because I've had another ten years of enjoyable life since they came up the stairs.
But there we are there.
One lives with compromise.
[camera shutters clicking.]
Good morning.
We unconditionally forgive our captors for abducting and holding us.
Should those who have been charged with holding us hostage be brought to trial and convicted, we ask that they be granted all possible leniency.
[indistinct.]
[Henderson.]
I did not think it was right for those who have been kidnapped to refuse to testify.
Because they were not being asked to condemn, they were not being asked to either ask for capital punishment or argue against it, they were simply being asked to identify people who had kidnapped them.
Kidnapping is a death penalty offense in Iraq.
Like, are they gonna Are they going to be killed if we testify? Like There's been enough death.
Like We don't need any more death.
We don't need any more people killed.
Very rarely do you feel like you're spit in the face by the people you've put in a lot of time and effort and risked your life for.
And that one was one that didn't sit well with me for a long time.
You know, I was raised a Christian as well and of the understanding that the greatest evil in the world is when good men see evil and do nothing about it.
I couldn't live with myself if I felt that I didn't do everything in my power to try and help stop the Iraqi crisis.
That was our mission, helping good men with guns go put bad men with guns out of business permanently.
[Loney.]
You know, some men with guns came and took us, and then some bigger men with bigger guns came and took them.
But the gun the gun's still in charge.
I am immensely grateful, and I'm here to tell you the story that I may not otherwise because of that intervention.
Tom's story died with him.
This story could have died with me.
[dog barking.]
But the bigger story, we're all part of the bigger story, and that bigger story is about how do we live as brothers and sisters without killing each other? [Henderson.]
It's nice to see you again.
[Loney.]
It's nice to see you.
[Loney.]
It's been [chuckles.]
[Henderson.]
It's been ten years.
[Loney.]
Almost exactly ten years.
And Fifteen days.
[somber music playing.]