Mennonite Weekly Review

Practically from the start, Jim Loney wanted to escape, even if he had to use force and ask God’s forgiveness later.

Jim Loney helps a Muslim woman speak on behalf of her husband, who was detained in a Canadian jail, during a 2004 rally in Toronto organized by Christian Peacemaker Teams. — Photo by CPT

“I don’t know what the right or wrong answer is,” Loney said in an April 25 interview from his home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. “But I felt increasingly that we weren’t going to get out alive unless we took matters into our own hands.”

Chained and handcuffed in a 10-by-10-foot room with three other Christian Peacemaker Teams activists, Loney, 41, said he became almost preoccupied with plans for eluding his captors — Sunni Muslim militants who had seized the group on a Baghdad street Nov. 26.

Loney was freed March 23 in a British-led military raid after 118 days in captivity with fellow Canadian Harmeet Singh Sooden, 33, and British citizen Norman Kember, 74. American Tom Fox, 54, was found shot to death in Baghdad on March 9.

Loney — a Roman Catholic who helped found Toronto’s Catholic Worker community — said the first chance to escape came on the fourth day of their ordeal, about the time their kidnapping was made public and the first video showing the four appeared on Aljazeera.

The CPTers had been left handcuffed individually, their hands in front of them, with only two guards in the upscale Baghdad house where they were being held. One of the guards was in a narrow courtyard, where he was busy drawing kerosene from a tank. The other was in the courtyard door, with his back turned.

Loney thought if he could shove the guard out, then bolt the door, he and the others might have enough time to make a run for it.

“I was debating, ‘Should I do it?’ ” Loney said in his first interview since being rescued. “But I was worried about the lock not sliding shut.”

Unsure of his options, Loney let the opportunity pass, and soon was glad he did. When the guards came back, they only secured the sticky lock after considerable effort.

“Escape was, for me, one of the most difficult internal struggles I had,” Loney said. “I thought about escape really from the very beginning.”