.... It has long been rumoured that just before the commandos arrived, the captors were called on their cellphones and told that it was in their best interests to leave – and very quickly.
Mr. Loney writes he doesn’t know if those rumours are true. But he is clearer on the aftermath.
“You have no idea how many people were involved, how many people risked their lives to get you out,” one “angry” soldier told Mr. Loney after he was taken to safety in a tank.
The soldier said future Christian Peacemaker teams should “think about that before they decide to send anybody else here.”
An RCMP inspector, Gordon Black, greeted Mr. Loney in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The Mountie told him he was nearly hit by mortars on the day he arrived in Baghdad. “If they’d hit a minute sooner, I’d be dead,” he told Mr. Loney.
Mr. Loney writes that he was shown the Canadian “operations room” where the rescue was planned. Although he thought he’d encounter hostility because his presence in the war zone had put people in danger, he was greeted with applause.
The windowless room had 10 computer workstations. Some of the staff were in uniforms and some in civilian clothes. “People worked here 24 hours a day, manning phones, following up on leads, talking to Ottawa,” he marvels. “I can’t believe it.”
He was also greeted warmly at Canada’s makeshift embassy by chargé d’affaires Stewart Henderson and his young assistant, Sonia Hooykaas, who had a dinner in his honour. They told him the Department of Foreign Affairs had just mandated they travel in half-a-million-dollar armoured cars because one of their vehicles was shot up a month before.
Mr. Loney writes that the rescue officials gave him some details of their operation. “By monitoring all the cellphone conversation going in and out of Baghdad, and by tracking different leads, they gradually narrowed in on the group that was holding us.”
A British book about the mission asserts that the release was preceded by 50 special-forces raids and the military interrogations of 47 people. By then, a U.S. hostage had been killed.
Although enormously grateful for the rescue effort, Mr. Loney writes that he was frequently conflicted.
A staunch pacifist, he declined to support the eventual prosecution of his suspected captors for fear they could face the death penalty. And before he left Iraq, he even had mixed feelings about whether he should take a congratulatory phone call from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
“What! Stephen Harper! Tell me he didn't win a majority!” Mr. Loney recalls erupting, upon learning Canada had elected a new Prime Minister during his captivity. The Conservatives had supported calls for Canada to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Loney soon got over his misgivings. “Thank you. For everything. … I mean … The government did so much,” he told the Prime Minister ....
