Officer of Engineers

Elite Canadian soldiers helped free hostages: CTV

Updated Fri. Mar. 24 2006 8:38 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Canada's elite JTF-2 special forces played an instrumental role in the rescue operation mounted by multinational troops to free the three aid workers, CTV News has learned.

Two Canadian aid workers and a British colleague held hostage in Iraq for nearly four months were rescued Thursday during a multinational military operation involving Canadian, British, and U.S. special forces.

Coalition forces were tipped off to the hostages' location by someone who was captured Wednesday night.

The operation to free the three aid workers was carried out early Thursday. U.S. and British forces broke into a house just northwest of the capital at about 8 a.m. local time, about three hours after that tip, according to U.S. Army Gen. Rick Lynch.

The hostages were freed without a shot being fired, Lynch added. They were bound, and held together. Their captors were not present.

Though Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada participated in the operation, he wouldn't confirm nor deny reports that the top secret commandos Joint Task Force Two helped rescue Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, and Briton Norman Kember, 74.

"At every phase of these particular events of this hostage-taking, Canadian government officials, the government of Canada, was fully engaged," Harper told reporters in Gatineau, Que.

"Anything beyond that, I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say. These are issues of national security," said Harper, who was awakened in the early hours with news of the rescue.

However, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay confirmed Thursday several Canadian agencies were involved in the rescue, including the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP.

"From top to bottom, in all the departments, everyone has been on the file, on the job," he said, appearing on CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live.

The Defence Department also refused to confirm Canadian military involvement, but a source told The Canadian Press the elite squad was "instrumental" in the rescue operation.

Defence officials stressed that they never comment on any operations involving JTF-2, claiming that any kind of confirmation could compromise future or ongoing hostage rescue situations.

Meanwhile, Harper made it clear that the Canadians who were sent to Iraq have nothing to do with the U.S.-led war in the violence-racked nation.

"Any personnel that have been present for this particular crisis will obviously not remain," Harper said.

The three aid workers -- all members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams -- were kidnapped in early November at gunpoint on a Baghdad street.

Also kidnapped was American Tom Fox, 54. Fox's bullet-riddled body was found on a Baghdad street on March 10, just days after his captors released a video in which he was ominously missing.

The Department of Foreign Affairs set up a crisis team immediately after the men were abducted from a Baghdad street on Nov. 26.

Senior government officials in various departments told The Canadian Press that the need to plan a military rescue became apparent within days of the hostages being seized.

CP reported that then-prime minister Paul Martin's Liberal government approved Canada's participation in the mission in the middle of the election campaign.

Ottawa dispatched a team of Canadian soldiers to Baghdad in early December that included a team of diplomats, Mounties, and CSIS intelligence officers.

Once the team determined a ransom note was unlikely to emerge, they came to the realization that the need to plan a military rescue mission was clear.

That team stayed in Baghdad through Christmas and into this year.

Liberal MP Dan McTeague, a former parliamentary secretary responsible for Canadians abroad, told CP the group made discreet inquiries about the hostages.

They also made it clear that the hostages were Canadian humanitarian workers, and that Canada did not back the war.

"There's a lot of people here who worked extremely hard and whose names and efforts may never be known, but there are three people alive today as a result of it," said McTeague.

"But let this be a solid reminder to all Canadians that the situation there is far from stable, and not going there isn't just about protecting their own lives, but about not endangering other lives of people back home."

With a report from CTV's Roger Smith and files from The Canadian Press

__________________
Chimo

Shek

Great! Door kickers are always welcome :biggin: Too bad the peace group is still a bunch of jerk-offs, talking about how the three were "released" instead of "rescued"

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

gunnut

Plus they blame their capture on the American presence in the first place. What a bunch of fruitcakes.

ZFBoxcar

The leader of the group was on a talk show in Toronto, and the talk show host kept trying to get him to express gratitude to the soldiers who rescued them. The guy danced around it the whole time and then at the end said it was the soldiers' fault for invading Iraq in the first place. The host (and almost all Canadians) were damn angry. There may be some knee-jerk anti-American sentiment in this country, but most people still understand the concept of gratitude...not to mention anger at the people who kidnap aid workers.

Horrido

"I'll give you two f***wit peaceniks for one of the guys you're planning to behead. Two for one! You KNOW you don't want to pass this up!"

It's obvious we need to set up such hostage "exchanges"...

__________________
The black flag is raised: Ban them all... Let the Admin sort them out.

I know I'm going to have the last word... I have powers of deletion and lock.

smilingassassin

I've been making it a point to mention that the hostages were "rescued" and not simply "released".

I like your thinking Horrido.....we need to send more peacniks of the brainless type over there.

My biggest beef is the AWOL American soldiers coming to Canada seeking asylum. Afraind of being persucuted they say....pffft....... they joined the army voluntarily, take the punishment like a man. I say we turn em over to the custody of Snipes and Bluesman......

Stinking AWOL cluster@#$@'s stinking up my country.....

Parihaka

Kudos on a job well done

-{SpoonmaN}-

Yeah I guess disagreeing with the war doesn't mean you dont have an obligation to help your citizens in the warzone. Good job too.

Jay

Yeah, did you see the news last week? This figgin AWOL moron issued statements in peace rally, he said some thing like I'm not a coward, else I wouldnt have gone in to Iraq and some thing of that sort.

__________________
A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

Jay

Rescue in Iraq surprises Canadians

By BETH DUFF-BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
photo
In this handout photo released by Christian Peacemaker, Canadian Hostages Jim Loney, right, and Harmeet Sooden are seen after their release, in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, March 24, 2006. Without firing a shot, U.S. and British forces stormed a house on March 23, 2006, and freed three Christian peace activists who were bound but unguarded, ending a four-month hostage ordeal that saw an American in the group killed and dumped along a railroad track. (AP Photo/Christian Peacemaker)

TORONTO -- While Canadians rejoiced at the news that two of their citizens were rescued from captivity in Iraq, some were surprised to learn Canadian special forces were involved in the mission and curious as to how many troops are on the ground.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters Thursday that a handful of Canadian troops have been stationed in Iraq since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation, which is still widely unpopular at home.

But he insisted the special forces who helped rescue Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, along with Briton Norman Kember, were in Iraq only temporarily with the express goal of obtaining the hostages' release.

The former Liberal Party government declined in 2003 to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq unless it came under the U.N. umbrella, and many Canadians have been critical of U.S. methods in Washington's war on terror.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said about 20 Canadian troops and other personnel were in Iraq working quietly since shortly after the kidnappings of the Christian Peacemaker Teams workers on Nov. 26.

"We were there with our very best," he told The Globe and Mail for Friday editions. "We had everyone fully engaged in this operation from day one." The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, intelligence officers and diplomats were also involved, he said.

"Canada should not (be) and is not passive when it comes to its own citizens and the protection of their lives," MacKay said.

It is believed that members of Canada's elite and secretive Joint Task Force 2 were also involved, but the government would neither confirm nor deny this.

Harper did confirm Thursday, shortly after the men were rescued, that an unspecified number of Canadians have been embedded with coalition forces since the beginning of the war.

"I'm not free to say anything more than that because this involves national security," he said. He denied Canadian troops were involved in the war, however, saying: "Any involvement that Canada has had on the ground in this particular matter was obviously targeted simply at the issue of Canadian hostages."

Canadian Defense spokeswoman Lt. Morgan Bailey told The Associated Press on Friday that only a handful of Canadian troops were on the ground in Iraq. She said one soldier is serving with a U.N. assistance team helping to draft a new constitution and coordinate humanitarian operations; three other Canadian soldiers are on an exchange with British forces.

"They do their normal job, only with the British unit," she said. "If their job is to be an engineer, they would do that job with the British."

But she declined to say whether there were special forces in Iraq.

"It's our policy not to speak about special operations abroad," she said.

In March 2003, when Parliament was debating whether to send troops to Iraq - some Conservatives believed it was imperative to help the Bush administration remove Saddam Hussein from power - several MPs said special forces had secretly been on the ground in Afghanistan, though Prime Minister Jean Chretien's government denied it.

Some Canadians were also surprised to learn that a dozen troops had been embedded with British and U.S. troops during the invasion of Iraq, in what are known as training exchanges.

Eric Walton, foreign affairs critic for the Green Party of Canada, said he didn't think most Canadians would oppose Canadian Forces in Iraq to help their own.

"My feeling is, you don't need permission for a rescue mission, if it's in and out," Walton said. "But the issue I have a problem with is the way the invasion occurred, against international law, and I think Canada should have taken a stand and pulled its troops out of those exchanges."

John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy think tank in Alexandria, Va., asked: What's the big deal?

"It would seem to me that the scandal would have been if they hadn't been there," Pike said. "The lives of Canadian nationals were at stake. If there had been no Canadians involved in this and it had come to grief, then the outrage would have been: `You allowed trigger-happy American cowboys to kill our people.'"

He said it is common for countries to send their special forces quietly to train in live combat situations, as the experience is invaluable.

"I certainly have the sense that there is a much larger special operations presence in Iraq than is widely understood," Pike said. "This type of combat experience is precious."


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...nada_Iraq.html

smilingassassin

Thats the best damn quote from our new govermment so far....

I'd also be curious to know just how many of our boys were sent to Iraq by the Liberals. I have no doubt that JTF-2 was sent to Iraq for this very mission.

smilingassassin

The thing that burns me here is...this moron volunteered for the army, he wasn't forced, he should have used his brain and realized that being a soldier means you may be killed and you ultimately will be fighting for your buddys life not the cause. If he thought that "its really messed up over there man" he shouldn't have joined the military if he's truely a man of conviction.

Instead he comes to Canada to run and hide and stir up anti war sentiment because he can't face the fact that he seriously contradicted his moral convictions by joining the military and can't face the fact that he F#&ked up by going AWOL.

Dems da rules pal.....

Jay

And yeah and that a$$ still dressed up as a soldier for the rally, to just prove that he aint a coward, truly pathetic!

lemontree

I am sure that Canada and the US have an extradition treaty. The army has a procedure for AWOL men. Its called court-martial and jail time, (that would really look nice on their resume' later in life). Their career is made.

__________________

Cheers!...on the rocks!!

smilingassassin

Agreed, its like quiting work without giving two weeks notice or giving your land lord 2 days notice that your moving out at the end of the month.....