Intelligence

Two minutes to freedom in SAS mission

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Nick Meo in Baghdad, Michael Evans, Daniel McGrory and Tom Baldwin
Iraqi suspect gave the multinational rescue force a crucial tip-off that led to house where Norman Kember was held
FOR a man in his seventies who had been held hostage for 118 days, never knowing if his captors were going to kill him, Norman Kember was in playful mood after his rescue by British forces from a house in west Baghdad yesterday.

Embracing fellow peace activists at the British Embassy, Mr Kember exclaimed: “I’ve just found out I’ve been released. It must be true — it’s on the news.” He and the two Canadians who had been held hostage with him, Jim Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32, spent an emotional hour with fellow members of the Christian Peacemakers Team.

Most of the time was spent “hugging and sharing vanilla and chocolate ice-cream”, Anita David, one of the activists, said. “There were tears, smiles and laughter.”

The only painful moment was when the activists had to tell the three hostages that their American colleague Tom Fox, who had been separated from them 40 days ago, had been murdered. “They didn’t know what had happened to him and it has come as a horrible shock,” Ms David said.

Mr Fox’s handcuffed, bullet-riddled body was found on March 9, dumped in a street not far from where the peace activists were rescued in yesterday’s dawn raid.

The long-awaited breakthrough that ensured Professor Kember and the two Canadians were spared a similiar fate came late on Wednesday night when one of two Iraqi men picked up by US troops during a raid in the capital revealed where the three were being held. Officials in Baghdad and London were saying little about the genesis of the operation, but it is thought that the young Iraqi had been under surveillance for several days and his capture was more than mere good fortune.

For months a secret unit known as Task Force Black, commanded by a senior SAS officer, has been quietly hunting Iraqi war criminals and searching for hostages.

Task Force Black is a combined team of about 250 US, British and Australian special forces backed up by intelligence personnel. After the hostages were snatched while leaving a mosque in western Baghdad last November, Scotland Yard also sent in trained negotiators, the Canadians flew in their kidnap experts, and FBI agents and MI6 officers were in Baghdad trying to make contact with intermediaries who could put them in direct touch with the kidnappers.

British undercover troops, bearded and dressed as Iraqis, met religious leaders and tribal elders to piece together scraps of information about the hostage-takers, who called themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Satellite photographs, telephone intercepts and reams of other information were examined in minute detail. Intelligence officers followed up dozens of tip-offs from paid informants, community leaders and Iraqi police, but all leads had proved false until the detainee betrayed his crucial secret.

The SAS had narrowed down the likely location of the kidnappers’ base to the scruffy suburbs of western Baghdad around al-Hurriyah, a stronghold of mainly Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs responsible for dozens of abductions of Iraqis. The detainee disclosed the precise address, describing the location and making sketches of the house and the nearby roads.

For weeks the special forces had practised strategies for taking kidnappers by surprise. They used mock-ups of various types of properties, unsure if the hostages were held in a basement or in a house where children lived. Now they had to act fast. Their concern, according to one source, was that the hostage-takers might realise that one of their gang had been captured and kill the three Westerners before escaping.

At about 3am yesterday the SAS squadron commander in charge of the rescue force summoned his team at their base inside the heavily fortified green zone. The force consisted mainly of SAS troopers, backed by about 50 soldiers from the 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines — all members of the Special Forces Support Group codenamed Task Force Maroon.

Defence sources told The Times that helicopters with reconnaissance cameras and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, which can monitor movements on the ground from 20,000ft, were deployed. The men who spearheaded the rescue arrived in a convoy of cars disguised as local taxis and pick-up trucks.

Half the team set up a cordon several streets away from the target so that innocent civilians did not blunder into an operation that might end in a shoot-out. The 25 men who burst into the two-storey building used classic hostage-rescue techniques, storming every room simultaneously to ensure no one escaped.

They found the three hostages sitting bound on the floor of a ground-floor room. Their captors had fled. No shots were fired. In case the kidnappers were lurking nearby the hostages were cut free, taken out of the building and bundled into the back of an army Land Rover. Less than two minutes after the rescue force had entered the building, the three Westerners were on their way to freedom.

They were driven to the green zone to waiting British officials. Professor Kember, who had always said that he did not want to be rescued by military force, had been saved by exactly that. Behind them the rest of Task Force Maroon searched the hideout, looking for clues as to the identity of the kidnappers and evidence indicating where other western hostages might be held.

Major-General Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the coalition forces, revealed they suspected that the peace activists were taken by “a kidnapping cell” who were behind other abductions in Baghdad.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, said he hoped that their rescue might help to secure the release of Jill Carroll, an American freelance journalist kidnapped in Baghdad on January 7.

Although the three hostages had been through a terrifying ordeal, British intelligence officers were waiting to speak to them. “They needed to know anything the three might be able to tell them about their abductors, or whether they had seen or heard any other Westerners while they were in captivity,” the security source said.

Only after this initial questioning were the men examined by a doctor. Although he was the oldest by some years, Mr Kember seemed the most robust. The two Canadians needed some minor treatment, but, while they were being seen to, all the men were allowed to telephone home.

Back in London, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told the Cabinet about the successful end to the operation. “For once we had good news from Iraq,” one Downing Street source said. “Tony Blair is delighted and sends his thanks to the forces who carried out this mission so professionally”.

Later, when they were reunited with their fellow activists, the hostages were even able to laugh about their ordeal. They said they had been treated well, although food was in short supply. They told how they were sometimes allowed to watch television but were out of touch with what had been happening in the past few months. “They were very curious about some of the things they had seen on TV and wanted us to explain what had been going on,” said Ms David.

“They didn't express any regrets about coming to Iraq for their mission, although I think it's too early to say whether they will return.”

March 24, 2006 at 07:02 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home