British former detainees at the US military base Guantanamo Bay appealed on Thursday for the release of four Western peace campaigners held hostage and facing execution in Iraq.
Moazzam Begg, a Briton detained for nearly three years at the Guantanamo base in Cuba, said images of the hostages in orange jumpsuits reminded him of their time in detention.
The plea came after Britain issued a renewed appeal for the kidnappers to make contact.
PHOTO: AP
Begg said in a statement on BBC television: "We came home to find that there were people who opposed their government in their brutal war waged against Afghanistan and Iraq and stood on the side of justice. And they were not Muslims."
Begg was one of the last four Britons to be repatriated from Guantanamo in January.
"It is our sincerest belief that Norman Kember, the 74-year-old Briton, and those with him are amongst those people, the many people, who opposed this war from the beginning and were only in Iraq to promote human rights for the oppressed," he said.
"Just like Sheikh Abu Qatada, we also hope that our words may encourage you to show mercy to these men and let them free," Begg said.
In an exceptional gesture, the British Foreign Office authorized Qatada, an Islamist with reputed al-Qaeda connections who is detained in Britain on security grounds, to record on Wednesday an appeal for the hostages' release.
The kidnappers of Kember, Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, and US national Tom Fox, 54, extended by 48 hours to today their deadline to kill them.
The four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) organization were abducted in Baghdad on Nov. 26 by a group calling itself the Brigades of the Swords of Right. It has threatened to kill them unless all detainees in US and Iraqi prisons are freed.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw earlier appealed to the abductors to make contact.
"As I have said before, if the kidnappers want to get in touch with us, we want to hear what they have to say. We have people in Iraq and the region, and they are ready to hear from the kidnappers," Straw said.
Straw's appeal did not include an explicit offer to open negotiations.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS