The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages.Neither the men nor the Canadian group that sent them to Iraq have thanked the people who saved them in any of their public statements. One of them, Norman Kember, 74, a retired physics professor, of Pinner, north-west London, was in Kuwait last night and was expected to return to Britain today. He is understood to have given some helpful information. He provided details of the semi-rural area north-west of Baghdad where he was held and confirmed that his captors were criminals, rather than insurgents. Their motive was believed to be money.
The two Canadians kidnapped with Mr Kember - Harmeet Sooden, 32, and Jim Loney, 41 - were said to have been co-operative at first but less so on arriving at the British embassy in Baghdad after being given the opportunity to wash, eat and rest.
| Gratitude faded mighty quick, didn't it. Plus it was an embassy bed, embassy bath and embassy food. |
Jan Benvie, 51, an Edinburgh teacher who is due to go to Iraq with the organisation this summer, said: "We make clear that if we are kidnapped we do not want there to be force or any form of violence used to release us."
| It's the moral part of us that causes us to rescue hostages, something you wouldn't understand. |
| Then she went back to meowing. |
Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the defence staff, told Channel 4 News: "I am slightly saddened that there does not seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives."
Asked if he meant that Mr Kember had not said thank you, he said: "I hope he has and I have missed it."
It emerged that about 50 soldiers, led by the SAS, including men from 1 Bn the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines, as well as American and Canadian special forces, entered the kidnap building at dawn.
| Canadian special forces in Iraq? That twitched the surprise meter. |
A second car bomb hit a market area outside a Shia Muslim mosque in the mostly mixed Shia-Sunni neighbourhood of Shurta in southwest Baghdad. At least six people were killed and more than 20 wounded, many of them children, police said. Roadside bombs targeting police patrols killed four others two policemen and two bystanders in Baghdad and at least one policeman in Iskandariyah. Police said dozens were wounded. Another two policemen were killed and two were wounded when gunmen ambushed their convoy in north Baghdad, an attack that police said was an aborted attempt to free detainees who were being transferred to the northern city of Mosul.