THE freed British hostage Norman Kember arrived back on British soil yesterday and tried to defuse a growing row over his response to the SAS mission that rescued him.

Speaking at Heathrow airport after being reunited with his wife Pat, the retired professor issued a statement to address criticism that he had failed to thank his rescuers. “I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue,” he said.

Kember was responding to remarks by General Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the general staff, who had suggested he had failed to express his gratitude to the troops who risked their lives to rescue him and two other hostages after four months in captivity.

Thanking those who had prayed for his release Kember, from Pinner, north London, said the world should focus on the plight of ordinary Iraqis.

“It is the ordinary people of Iraq that you should be talking to, the people who have suffered so much over many years and still await the stable and just society they deserve,” he said. Relatives of British soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq should also not be forgotten.

But the brevity of his tribute to his rescuers fuelled the row over the attitude of his group, the pacifist Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), to the rescue mission. Sources close to the SAS unit said the peace activists who had sponsored his visit to Iraq repeatedly failed to co-operate with special forces trying to locate and rescue him.

They said yesterday that after Kember, 74, was kidnapped last November, the CPT in Iraq declined to provide them with information that could have helped them to find him.

Well-placed sources said members of the Canadian group in Baghdad failed to provide the SAS with Kember’s mobile phone number. Cell site analysis could have helped rescuers to trace his last movements.

Doug Pritchard, co-director of the CPT worldwide, said the group had refused to meet any of the military rescue team, preferring to deal with diplomats.

“We said from the outset we didn’t want a military raid and we wouldn’t work with the military,” he said. Relations with the British embassy had become tense after the group told them it was reluctant to enter the green zone and declined to allow diplomats with military escorts to visit their offices outside the zone.

Kember was freed last Thursday after 50 soldiers, led by the SAS, stormed a building on the outskirts of western Baghdad.

Two Canadians, Harmeet Sooden, 33, and Jim Loney, 41, were also rescued. The body of Tom Fox, 54, an American who was taken hostage with them, was found in Baghdad earlier this month. He had been shot.

Kember said in his statement: “I am not ready at this time to talk about my months of captivity except to say that I am delighted to be free . . . I now need to reflect on my experience — was I foolhardy or rational? — and also to enjoy freedom in peace and quiet.”

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