One hundred and eighteen days: the harrowing tale of James Loney, a Toronto man kidnapped in Iraq

Of the many humiliations James Loney suffered during his terrifying captivity in Baghdad, the worst was his kidnappers’ promise—delivered and broken, over and over—that he was about to be set free By Gerald Hannon

James Loney in his Parkdale apartment. His memoir about his kidnapping ordeal, Captivity, is out this month (Image: Derek Shapton)

Baghdad, in November 2005, was a war-ravaged, frightening, almost unlivable city. The streets were plagued by chaotic traffic jams and had become a crazy patchwork of potholes, smoking garbage, rubble and abandoned cars. Telephones rarely worked and electricity was undependable. The air was often thick with smog. You could count on seeing men with guns roaming the streets. You could count on hearing gunfire. Kidnappings had become a daily event, the work of insurgents with political motives or criminals after a buck. The first kidnapping of a foreigner happened on April 5, 2004. By the end of the month, 42 more had been taken. Just a year and a half later, the Washington Post reported that 425 non-Iraqis had been kidnapped. Of those, nearly a fifth had been murdered. The situation was even worse for Iraqis themselves—the same paper noted that a minimum of 30 citizens were kidnapped each day, their ransom averaging out at some $30,000 per, though the affluent could expect to pay considerably more. Even arriving at Baghdad International Airport was dangerous and terrifying—planes had to drop suddenly from 29,000 feet in a tight, corkscrew pattern in order to avoid fire.

Among the passengers flying into Baghdad from Amman, Jordan, on November 21 were 41-year-old James Loney and 32-year-old Harmeet Singh Sooden, both from Canada, and a 75-year-old British citizen named Norman Kember. Tom Fox, a 52-year-old American, was already there, awaiting their arrival. (Though James knew Tom slightly, the others were all meeting for the first time.) They were members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, an inter­national organization that documents evidence of human rights abuses in war zones, and sometimes asks its members to put their bodies on the line, to stand peacefully between two volatile factions, in hopes that violence might be averted. James was the group’s Canadian program co-ordinator. He’d visited Baghdad before. When it became clear, post 9/11, that the United States would invade, he volunteered to be part of a 10-day CPT delegation that went in January 2003 to assess the situation. He returned a year later for a 10-week stint, experiencing first-hand how the early exhilaration at Saddam’s removal had evaporated as infrastructure crumbled and the clumsy and often brutal hand of the coalition forces provoked a growing rebellion. Another delegation was planned for November 2005. James, aware of the dangers but committed to the CPT philosophy of “risky peacemaking,” asked if he could lead it. His offer was accepted.

One of their first initiatives in the city was to meet at the Umm al-Qura mosque with a human rights officer for the Muslim Scholars Association, a recently formed organization of hard-line Sunni clerics with whom the CPT had been trying to forge a relationship. The meeting was set for two in the afternoon of November 26, and it did not go particularly well. They introduced themselves as CPT representatives, in Iraq to try to understand the realities of occupation. The Muslim Scholars rep, a large man with a thick brown beard, detailed the nightmare of life under occupation, said that everything had been better under Saddam Hussein, and indicated, by looking at his watch, that the meeting was over. James remarked, as they left the mosque with their translator to return to their van, that they’d not been offered tea—a rare breach of etiquette in a courtesy-obsessed culture. Tom mentioned that a man in a car, who had been watching them closely when they’d entered, had given him the creeps.

Their driver was waiting for them in the parking lot. It was shortly after 3 p.m. when they pulled onto a nearly deserted road. A minute later, their driver braked suddenly—a white sedan had blocked their way. Four men armed with AK-47s got out of that car, evicted the van’s driver and translator, commandeered the vehicle, and drove off. James was forced to the floor of the vehicle; the others sat with guns trained on their faces. Of the four shocked and terrified captives, James was the first to speak. Typically, and rather sweetly (he can seem the very exemplar of the soft-spoken, polite Canadian), he tried to alleviate the tension by making introductions. “My name is Jim,” he said. “This is Tom, and Harmeet, and…” He was told to shut up. The van drove on for another 15 or 20 minutes, finally passing through a gate into the courtyard of a house. James had no idea where they were. Two men closed the gate behind them. They were led into the building, searched, handcuffed and blindfolded. Within two weeks they would be moved, one by one in the trunk of a car, to another, larger house. Those two buildings would be their home for 118 days.

Loney offered to pray for his captor’s girlfriend, who was dying of cancer. The more his jailers saw him as peace-oriented, the harder it would be for them to kill him

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