U.S. tracking group links Christians' captors, Islamic Army of Iraq

Published: 2005-12-13

TORONTO (CNS) -- An American terrorist tracking organization has found a link between the group that kidnapped four Christian peace activists in Baghdad Nov. 26 and the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most violent and feared organizations in the Iraqi insurgency. However, at the Christian Peacemaker Teams office in Toronto the crisis team continues to talk about "when Jim comes home," referring to their kidnapped colleague, Jim Loney. Despite silence and passed deadlines from Baghdad, the organization continues to believe its team members will be released. "Statistically, close to 80 percent of those who are held are released, and that's just factual," said Christian Peacemaker Teams corps member Robin Buyers. The SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) Institute, which monitors Arabic-language terrorist Web sites, discovered that the original video of the hostages was uploaded to a hidden directory of the Islamic Army of Iraq's Web site before it was made public on the Al Jazeera television network.

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