New video of CPTers

A new video was released yestarday on al-Jazeera. It showed 3 of my colleagues from CPT who were kidnapped and, at a time when hope could have been dwindling, it is reassuring to see them alive. My closest freind amongst the group, Tom Fox, did not feature in this video. I echo the statement CPT has released:

"We do not know what to make of Tom Fox's absence from this video. However we do know what motivated Tom and his colleagues to go to Iraq. Tom wrote on the day before he was taken, "We are here to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God... How we take part in the creation of this realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength, and to love our neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves." Many Iraqi friends and human rights workers welcome CPT as a nonviolent, independent presence. Iraqis have asked us to tell their stories in our home communities, to share with them our own experiences of peacemaking, to assist them in building nonviolent institutions in Iraq, and to accompany them as they seek justice for detainees and others suffering from the oppression of Iraq. We seek to promote what is human in all of us and so to offer a glimpse of hope in a dark time. This hope springs from our own faith tradition. We have witnessed a similar hope within the faith traditions of the people of Iraq. We believe that the root cause of the abduction of our colleagues is the U.S. and British-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many in Iraq have experienced this long war as terrorism. The occupation must end."

Tim Nafzinger, who will be Best Man at my wedding in June, speaks about the new video and particularly about Norman Kember on Democracy Now.

On the theme of detainees here's an excellent interview by my friend Jane with Moazzam Begg, one of the Brits eventually released from Guantánamo Bay.