“Our hearts are filled with joy today…” These were the opening words of CPT’s statement on March 23, twenty years ago, when Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney, and Norman Kember were freed after 118 days in captivity in Iraq. Their return was met with relief and celebration, but that joy was not whole. Tom Fox, the fourth member of their team, had been killed three months into captivity.
The four were part of a CPT delegation to Iraq, bearing witness to the suffering of ordinary Iraqis living under a harsh military occupation—people enduring daily violence, instability, and loss. Their mission was not only to document these realities but to challenge the dominant narratives that justify war and normalize human suffering.
Before his own captivity, reflecting on the kidnapping of the team’s friend Margaret Hassan in Baghdad, Tom Fox wrote that she “modeled an extravagant way of living for others.” This was the story they sought to tell: the steadfast courage of Iraqis striving for a just and flourishing life, free from oppression. It was also the vision of nonviolent resistance that CPT embodied—a world still open to the possibility of justice and peace.
In the aftermath of his release, Norman Kember spoke of forgiveness, resisting the expectation that he respond with anger or hatred: “I’ve spoken about forgiveness often since my kidnapping,” he wrote, “and many people rubbish the whole idea…the truth is I have never felt any animosity towards my captors.”
Harmeet Sooden, in his own statement, widened the lens: “Although we were held captive for 118 days, all of Iraq is a prison. Iraqis must endure daily violence and insecurity, lack of food, contaminated water, limited electricity and fuel supply, a breakdown in law and order, and they carry fear and uncertainty about the future. Our captors, too, are prisoners of this circumstance.”
These are the same principles CPT continues to uphold: an anti-militarist commitment that rejects violence in the face of an oppressive world where marginalized bodies continue to be treated as disposable. We stand in solidarity through creative nonviolence, seeking to humanize all people and to work toward a more just and inclusive collective liberation. This work of love is only possible when we are held by what Jim Loney tenderly called the “great hand of solidarity,” the sustaining force that carried so many through those 118 days.
Today, as another tragedy unfolds in the same region, we find ourselves compelled once more to ask the question voiced at Tom’s memorial: “Who will take Tom’s place?” Twenty years later, the call to solidarity endures.
