Ekklesia is reporting that Jim Loney, Norman Kember and and Harmeet Singh Sooden, are to issue a joint statement Friday in the UK, regarding the 2007 trial of their alleged Iraq captors.

Former Iraq hostages, James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, will arrive in the UK this week to be reunited with fellow captive Norman Kember, and issue a statement concerning their alleged captors who may face the death penalty.

This will be the first time the former hostages have met together since they were released in March.

The three members of a Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) delegation to Iraq, were kidnapped on November 26, 2005 and held for 118 days before being freed by British and American forces on March 23, 2006.

Tom Fox, an American citizen and full-time member of the CPT team working in Baghdad at the time, was also kidnapped and then murdered on March 9, 2006.

The meeting of the three surviving hostages has been organised following the news that their alleged captors are to face trial in Iraq in the new year.

The four were kidnapped by a group calling themselves The Swords of Righteousness Brigade. 74 year odl Norman Kember told UK news last month, testifying against the Iraqis was a moral dilemma, since he is against the death penalty.

“I don’t wish them any ill. I think that some of them had reasons for regarding us as their enemies,” Mr Kember told Channel 4.

“I feel that forgiveness is the most positive thing that we can do in this situation

“I would rather that they went free than they had a long prison sentence.”

Mr Kember said he would consider testifying only if he believed it could get further clemency for the men.

“Unless I could be persuaded that by giving a testimony, and asking for clemency, and that that would help, then I wouldn’t be prepared to testify,” he said.

“I think that some of them had reasons for regarding us as their enemies because they saw us as part of the allied force.

“Because some had lost relatives, one had lost his home and so on.

“So I don’t think it justified, what they did, but I can understand it.”

Mr Kember said he believed in restorative justice and would prefer to see made aware that what they did would not help the future of Iraq.

“I think that we are implicated in the way that that problem arose,” he said.

“I don’t think that we in the West have any moral high ground to say that this or that should happen in Iraq.”

July interview with Harmeet Sooden