Prisoner tip-off led to hostage rescue

BAGHDAD - Weeks of intelligence work in lawless west Baghdad and a rapid response by special forces to information extracted from a prisoner led to British troops' rescue of three Christian peace activists, including New Zealand student Harmeet Sooden, in Baghdad last night.

British and US officials were reluctant to give details of the release of Briton Norman Kember and Canadians Mr Sooden and Jim Loney, not wishing to jeopardise efforts to free several other hostages believed still held around the capital.

Kember, a 74-year-old veteran pacifist and retired professor, said in a brief statement: "It's great to be free."

"It was part of ongoing operations related to hostages," said British military spokesman Wing Commander Tony Radcliffe.

The dawn raid that found the three hostages tied up and unguarded in a house was led by British troops and involved others from the US-led Coalition, officials said.

They were acting on intelligence obtained three hours earlier from one of two people arrested the night before.

Though not a shot was fired, it is likely the operation was led by special forces ready to quell resistance and, especially, get the captives out unharmed after four months in captivity: "It was a fairly clinical extraction," Radcliffe said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "It follows weeks and weeks of very careful work by military Coalition personnel in Iraq and many civilians as well."

That suggested that the arrest of the man who provided the final tip was the product of detective work rather than chance.

Special police teams, apparently from Britain and possibly Canada, had been working on the ground since the four men were seized in west Baghdad on November 26, British officials said, stressing the role civilians played in the process.

Among foreigners still missing are two Kenyan engineers and American journalist Jill Carroll, seized in Baghdad in January.

Sporadic gunfire throughout the day after the operation near the Abu Ghraib suburb that is a stronghold of Sunni insurgents suggested Iraqi forces might be continuing a sweep of the area.

The killing of a fourth Christian hostage, American Tom Fox, may have spurred greater urgency in the hunt. His tortured body was found in Baghdad on March 10, three days after his three colleagues were seen in a videotape appealing for help.

When Briton Kenneth Bigley was captured with two American fellow engineers in 2004, British intelligence work among Sunni insurgent sympathisers came close to securing his release from an al Qaeda group, officials were quoted as saying. He was later beheaded, as his two American colleagues had been earlier.

Officials familiar with kidnappings in Iraq say they have had to deal with a confusing array of groups with differing motives. In some cases, ransom payments have been made to criminal gangs. In others, the motives are political. Some captives have been sold by one type of organisation to another.

The kidnappers of the four peace workers, described by a US military spokesman as a "kidnap cell", issued video tapes in the name of the shadowy Swords of Truth group, in which they called for the release of all prisoners in Iraq.

In the past, political demands made in public have seemed to serve as cover for ransom requests delivered more privately.

The fact that the hostages survived for months after the first deadline passed suggests there may have been an element of communication between the kidnappers and officials. That they were found unguarded may reflect the striking of some deal.

The British government has long made clear it will not pay ransom. Officials declined all comment on the subject.

Once the three are home, more may be clear about who held them and why. As Alan Betteridge, a fellow British activist, said: "Back in their homelands they will have a lot to tell us."

- REUTERS