Kidnapped by Iraqis... then by Americans

My friend Phil Sands, a British journalist, was kidnapped on Boxing Day but freed by US soldiers who stumbled across him accidently during a house raid on New Years Eve (as an independent journalist, no one had realised he was missing - see his accounts in the Scotsman and San Francisco Chronicle).

It is good news that Phil is free, however his translator Salam, who is one of my closest Iraqi friends and was my translator back in 2003, was immediately detained by the Americans and is still been held by them. They did not even allow him to call his family who only learnt what had happened when we managed to contact them via a mutual friend. Translators and drivers are routinely suspected of being involved in kidnappings - it took weeks to release our CPT translators and drivers who were detained after the kidnapping in November - which is a great disservice to these Iraqis who put themselves at great risk to protect us and enable us to work. Phil is convinced that Salam had nothing whatsoever to do with his kidnapping, and I support him 100%.

Back in the Middle East

Eid Mubarrak. As the whole Muslim world commemorates Ibraham's willingness to obey God through sacrifice I pray that people will be convicted by the story of Eid al-Adha that while God asks for obedience he never wills the death of innocents.

Apologies for my silence over the last month. I've been waiting for something positive to say about my abducted friends from CPT, but unfortunately there is nothing to report yet. Things seem to have gone stagnant and we only have rumours and theorising to go on. What we know for sure is that CPT's work is appreciated by a great number of Iraqis, Palestinians and Muslims around the world with whom we'd had no contact prior to the incident, and I am grateful and humbled by the depth of this support. In Palestine some friends of the team actually lost their jobs because they dropped everything to work full time on the case. I met two particularly brave people, Anas from Britain and Ehab from Canada, who travelled to Iraq to lobby for their release.

For my part I'm embarrassed to admit that since 20 December I've been on holiday. There did not seem to be anything much I could add to what others were doing by being in the region and so I stuck to my plans to spend Christmas in America with my fiance trying to plan our wedding (unfortunately we eventually ruled out Baghdad as a venue! It's likely to happen in the summer in two parts, one in the US and one in the UK, possibly with some follow up celebrations in the Middle East) and then New Year in England seeing many family and friends for the first time in many months.

Of course I've been glued to email and the phone through this period and continually aware that somewhere in Iraq those four wonderful people are now entering the 7th week of their ordeal. And many others besides including some kidnapped Iraqis I'm trying to help and one of my first and closest Iraqi friend who is being detaineed by US soldiers. I just heard about Jill Carroll's abduction. She was one of Marla Ruzicka's dear friends and I was moved by her words at Marla's memorial service in Baghdad last April. Jill has written consistently insightful articles in the CSM over the last few years. Tragically her translator Alan (a friend of Riverbend) was killed in the abduction. It is frustrating that so much time and energy is being drained from those reporting the truth in Iraq through the kidnapping of people like the CPTers and Jill.

Anyhow I'm back in the region now and I value all of your prayers for my friends and all those suffering in Iraq. May 2006 be the year when the tide turns against occupation and sectarian violence and the country begins to move towards peace, justice and prosperity. Inshallah.