New Wave Of Kidnappings

Iraqi Authorities Believe Activists Captured In Pre-Election Ploy

(CBS/AP)  Al Jazeera broadcast video Tuesday of four Western peace activists held hostage by a previously unknown group, part of a new wave of kidnappings police fear is aimed at disrupting next month's elections.

The news station said the four were seized by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, which claimed they were spies working under the cover of Christian peace activists. The captives an American, a Briton and two Canadians were members of the Chicago-based aid group Christian Peacemaker Teams, which confirmed they disappeared Saturday.

The footage showed Norman Kember, a retired British professor with a shock of white hair, sitting on the floor with three other men. The camera revealed the 74-year-old Kember's passport, but the other hostages were not identified.

Christian Peacemaker Teams identified the other hostages as Tom Fox, 54, of Clearbrook, Va.; James Loney, 41, of Toronto; and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, a Canadian electrical engineer.

The brief, blurry tape was shown the same day German TV displayed a photo of a blindfolded German woman being led away by armed captors in Iraq. The kidnappers threatened to kill aid worker Susanne Osthoff and her Iraqi driver unless Germany halts all contacts with the Iraqi government.

Al Jazeera said the four were seized by a previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, which claimed they were spies working under the cover of Christian peace activists. It was not clear when the video was made.

The captives were members of the Chicago-based aid group Christian Peacemaker Teams, which confirmed they disappeared Saturday. Besides Kember, Canadian officials said the hostages included two Canadians and an American whose names have not been released.

In other developments:

Police said a suicide car bomber killed eight Iraqi soldiers and wounded five when he drove into an army patrol in Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad.

German television broadcast photos Tuesday showing a blindfolded German woman being led away by armed captors in Iraq. Six Iranian pilgrims, meanwhile, were abducted by gunmen north of Baghdad.

Two U.S. soldiers assigned to Task Force Baghdad were killed when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb north of the capital, the U.S. command said. At least 2,109 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

President Bush said Tuesday that "it would be a terrible mistake" to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq and that politics should not play any part in a decision about withdrawal. The continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq will be the subject of an address by the president Wednesday night.

Sunni Muslim civilians are increasingly claiming that men in their families have been abducted and in many cases, tortured and killed, by men they say appeared to be officers of the Shiite-led Iraqi government. "The nighttime death squads usually wear Iraqi uniforms, from their daytime jobs as Iraqi policemen or commandos. As U.S. one commander told us, 'in some neighborhoods, we'd have to arrest more than half the police force,'" reports CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier

A group spokeswoman said Christian Peacemaker Teams strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and does not consider itself a fundamentalist organization.

"We are very strict about this: We do not do any evangelism, we are not missionaries," said Jessica Phillips. "Our interest is to bring an end to the violence and destruction of civilian life in Iraq."

Its first activists went to Iraq in 2002, six months before the U.S.-led invasion, Phillips said, adding that a main mission since the invasion has been documenting alleged human rights abuses by U.S. forces.

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©MMV CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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