Peace activists shown in Iraq hostage video

FOUR peace activists taken hostage in Iraq were shown in an insurgent video broadcast on Arab television yesterday, with a previously unknown group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping.

The Swords of Righteousness Brigade said the four were spies working undercover as Christian peace activists, al-Jazeera television news reported.

The station said it could not verify any of the information on the tape.

The tape showed four men and a British passport belonging to Norman Kember.

The British government and the Christian Peacemaker Teams group have both reported that Mr Kember was among four activists taken hostage on Saturday.

Christian Peacemaker Teams said in a statement the four men were working on behalf of Iraqi civilians. The group said it has had a team in Iraq since October 2002, working with US and Iraqi detainees and training others in nonviolent intervention and human rights documentation.

Mr Kember and another person were part of a visiting delegation, while two members of the group’s Iraq-based staff also were taken, a statement said.

Mr Kember, a retired professor, is a longtime peace activist who once fretted publicly that he was taking the easy way out by protesting in safety at home while British soldiers risked their lives in Iraq.

Six Iranian pilgrims who were taken hostage yesterday morning were released later in Balad.

Meanwhile, German television broadcast photos showing a blindfolded German woman being led away by armed captors in Iraq.

The pictures of Susanne Osthoff were taken from a video in which her captors demanded that Germany stop any dealings with Iraq’s government, according to Germany’s ARD television.

Germany has ruled out sending troops to Iraq and opposed the US-led war.

Ms Osthoff, 43, is a fluent Arab speaker and a trained archaeologist who has worked since 1998 for the Munich-based management consulting firm FaktorM, which said on its website that she has “organised and supported the distribution of aid goods in Iraq since 1991.” She was in Iraq working to help German organisations distribute medicine and medical supplies.

Elsewhere, two US soldiers assigned to Task Force Baghdad were killed when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb north of the capital, and a suicide car bomber killed eight Iraqi soldiers and wounded five more when he drove into an army patrol Tuesday in Tarmiyah, 48 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Iraq was rocked by a wave of foreigner kidnappings and beheadings in 2004 and early 2005, but they have dropped off in recent months as many Western groups have left and security precautions for those who remain have tightened.

Insurgents, including al-Qaida in Iraq, seized more than 225 people, killing at least 38.

In Britain, two men appeared in court yesterday charged with leaking a sensitive government memo that reportedly suggests Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded US President George Bush not to bomb al-Jazeera.

Civil servant David Keogh, 49, and former legislative researcher Leo O’Connor, 42, appeared at Bow Street Magistrates Court, charged under the Official Secrets Act.