How Jim Loney learned to jimmy handcuffs

You've got to wonder about the films that the Swords of Righteousness Brigade showed to James Loney and his fellow hostages in Baghdad.

First, there was the Arabic-language DVD about Jesus, an odd choice seeing that his kidnappers were Sunni Muslim militants.

Then, there was Con Air, the 1997 Nicholas Cage flick in which a bunch of prisoners are shown overpowering their guards and taking over a transport aircraft.

Huh?

What where they thinking?

The film, shown to Loney, Harmeet Sooden, Tom Fox and Norman Kember in the high-end Baghdad house where they were held for 118 days, definitely planted some ideas in Loney's mind.

Loney watched as one of the Con Air prisoners used a bit of metal wire to jimmy the lock in his handcuffs.

A light went on inside his head.

Pulling a tack from the heel of his shoe, Loney tried it on his own handcuffs.

And yes, he was able to spring his cuffs open.

What next?

Should he try to escape?

This now seemed possible for Loney and fellow Canadian Harmeet Sooden.

But they would have leave behind Tom Fox and Norman Kember, because those two colleagues were held in more secure bonds.

Fox was typically chained to a door.

Kember was typically chained to Fox.

Also, there was the knotty dilemma of what degree of force, if any, could appropriately be used by a Christian Peacemaker to incapacitate his captors and gain his freedom.

Loney reveals his struggles with these and other issues in his first media interview since he was released last month.

The current issue of the Mennonite Weekly Review, an "independent journalistic ministry" based in Newton, Kansas, discloses a great deal of new information about Loney's captivity.

Among the new revelations:

- communication between the abductees and abductors was difficult because the kidnappers were not fluent in English and none of the hostages spoke much Arabic

- the hostages were denied access to newspapers and books

- denied Bibles, they nonetheless participated in daily Bible studies using verses they knew from memory

- the kidnapped peace activists were forced to sleep while they were handcuffed and chained to each other

- their four guards lied to them repeatedly, including telling them that Tom Fox had been separated from them to be released

- the hostages nonetheless strongly suspected Fox had been killed

- they didn't learn for sure about Fox's assassination until after they were released

- the hostages were allowed baths only once every few weeks

- their clothes were laundered about one every four weeks

- the RCMP has told Loney that he's is a marked man in Iraq and will likely be killed if he decides to return there

To read the Mennonite Weekly Review article based on Jim Loney's first interview, please click here.