“He was astonished by everything, like someone who didn’t believe that he had been set free,” said Anita David of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), the group that sent Kember to Iraq. “He was watching the television, looking as if he had to see himself to believe he was free.”

The 74-year-old peace activist from Pinner, northwest London, who was kidnapped four months ago, had been rescued with two Canadian hostages by an international team of special forces soldiers led by SAS men.

A fourth hostage was found murdered earlier this month and it had been widely feared that Kember would suffer the same fate. Was the Baptist pacifist grateful for being rescued? That was what British soldiers wanted to know.

“Let’s see if he thanks the rescue team,” wrote a contributor to arrse.com, the “Army Rumour Service” website.

“Brave guys had to put their lives at risk to save some latter-day missionaries who were seriously out of their depth,” wrote another.

A contributor calling himself Bomb Doctor was even more blunt: “Good news and glad he won’t have to make any more home videos,” he wrote, referring to film footage released by the kidnappers while Kember was being held.

“But . . . let’s hope he’s learnt a valuable lesson. Stay at home, stop putting soldiers’ lives at risk when they have to rescue you and stop being so naive!” No gratitude to the military was immediately forthcoming. Kember privately thanked staff at the British embassy; but he and his fellow hostages made it plain that they saw their freedom as a religious deliverance. “We are deeply grateful for all those who prayed for our release,” they said as they left Baghdad.

The CPT distanced itself even further from the military. “We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by multinational forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping,” it said.

Only later, as rumbles grew in the army, did it say that it was “grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives” to free the hostages. Kember’s wife Pat, smiling again after enduring four months of waiting, thanked “all those who have helped to secure his release”.

This was not enough to placate the army chief, General Sir Mike Jackson, who went on Channel 4 to growl that he was “saddened there doesn’t seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save (the hostages’) lives”.

Yesterday, when Kember arrived at Heathrow, he said that while he did not believe that lasting peace could be achieved by armed force, he thanked those who had played a part in his rescue.

His local Baptist church also thanked the British government for securing the release of the hostages without loss of life. The SAS is trained to kill kidnappers while freeing their victims. On this occasion the hostage takers seemed to have vanished before the troops arrived.

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