Mennonite Weekly Review

Former hostage Norman Kember said he considered committing suicide during his captivity with three other Christian Peacemaker Teams activists seized last year in Baghdad.

Kember, 74, of Great Britain, told the BBC on April 15 that he thought because some Iraqis consider his country an enemy, ending his life would ease the ordeal for his Canadian colleagues, Jim Loney, 42, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 33.

“When you are really depressed, you think of suicide, but there are not the means to do so,” Kember told the BBC.

American CPTer Tom Fox, 54, of Clearbrook, Va., who was kidnapped with the other three on Nov. 26, was found shot to death on March 9. A British-led special forces team rescued Kember, Loney and Sooden on March 23.

During the interview with the BBC program “Taking a Stand,” Kember described how members of a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade seized the men on a Baghdad street.

“We got in our car, the four of us with a driver and a translator, and we were just driving out toward the main road when a car stopped in front of us,” Kember told the BBC. “Out popped four men with guns, pushed out the driver and the translator and took over the car and told Jim to lie on the floor and pointed guns at us, and off we were driven.”

Kember said the four were then “driven through a big iron gate and into a fairly secure house. We were taken in, sat down, and we were handcuffed fairly soon after that.”

Kember also described with great emotion his rescue by members of the British army’s Special Air Services. The SAS team and U.S. special forces stormed the house and found the hostages left unattended.

“Suddenly we heard noise outside and then somebody calling out and then the breaking of glass and then up the stairs came these SAS gents,” Kember told the BBC. “It’s unbelievable because it was so sudden and first of all, because they were British, they wanted to know if ‘Mr. Kember’ was there, and I said, ‘Yes.’ ”

Kember, who has been criticized in Great Britain for not expressing sufficient gratitude to his rescuers, said he considers the soldiers who risked their lives on his behalf “brave.”