Ex-CPT Hostage Speaks of Ordeal in Captivity

|TOP|Former Christian Peacemaker Teams hostage in Iraq, James Loney, has spoken of his struggle of faith whilst in captivity in his first full-length interview since he was freed at the end of March 2006.

Speaking to Robert Rhodes of the Mennonite Weekly Review, an inter-Mennonite newspaper in the US, the Canadian Loney revealed his constant struggle with the thoughts of escaping and the use of force.

“I don’t know what the right or wrong answer is,” said Loney in his home in Sault St. Marie, Ontario, Canada. “But I felt increasingly that we weren’t going to get out alive unless we took matters into our own hands.”

The Roman Catholic, who helped found Toronto’s Catholic Worker community, revealed: “Escape was, for me, one of the most difficult internal struggles I had.

“I thought about escape really from the very beginning.”

|QUOTE|James Loney was held captive in Baghdad for more than 100 days with fellow CPT workers Norman Kember, the retired British professor, Harmeet Singh Sooden, previously of Montreal, and the late Tom Fox from the US who was found shot dead not long before the release of the other three men.

The four men spent much of the long days of captivity bound to one another with only a few breaks in the monotony to use the bathroom or exercise.

The internal struggle that took place within Loney each day centred on the clash between his commitment to non-violence and the recurring thoughts of escape that would likely result in at least some use of force.

“I was prepared to use some force to get us out, and my limit was avoiding any permanent physical harm,” he said. “I felt like it would be wrong in a sense, but I was willing to live with this and to ask God’s forgiveness.”

|AD|The question of the use of force in the face of evil still troubles Loney over a month after his release: “Can even a small amount of force be justified? When does the use of physical force become violence?”

Loney’s experience was one that truly pushed to the limit his commitment to non-violence and the teachings of Christ to even love enemies.

“I didn’t like what it was doing to me,” Loney said. “I would look at them [the captors] and be thinking, ‘This is how I could incapacitate them,’ and then I would think of Jesus’ call to love your enemy and it just seemed really incongruous. These thoughts interfered with my ability to love them, something which was already hard enough to do.”

The Canadian went on to reveal the struggle to maintain faith during their 118 days of captivity, in which they were also given no books or newspapers to read.

In a bid to maintain their faith and spiritual strength, the four men would each take turns in leading a daily worship service.

With no Bible on hand, the four men relied on passages they knew from memory to conduct the services and to hold their daily Bible study sessions.

“We would take turns, recalling as best we could a Scripture passage,” Loney said.

Fox, a Quaker, introduced to the other CPTers a Quaker tradition in which you are encouraged to reflect on ‘What does this passage mean to me?’.

“We would just sort of chew on that together. It was a good way to support each other,” said Loney.

Loney admitted that with the language barrier between the hostages and the captors, “I don’t know if they really knew what we were doing”.

In the time since his return to his hometown in Ontario, Loney has focused on trying to resume a normal life once again.

“I just feel pulled in different directions,” said Loney, who also revealed his plans to return to his work in CPT’s Toronto office. “I never understood what freedom was until I was deprived of it. I just ached for the most basic things in God’s creation — blue skies, breezes.”

But Iraq is a place he still regards so fondly despite his ordeal there.

“I love Iraq, and I love the people there,” he said. “And I think the suffering that’s happening there now . . . is something that really affects me deeply.”