A Springfield native was one of four members of a peacekeeping team kidnapped in Iraq on Saturday.
Tom Fox, a 54-year-old resident of Clearbrook, Va., has been in Iraq with the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peace and working with human rights organizations.
Kimberly Prince, a full-time staff member who has been working in Colombia with Christian Peacemaker Teams, said she was not able to say where Fox and his four teammates were working when they were kidnapped, but another team from that organization is still in Iraq.
"We're not at liberty to discuss many of the details because of concerns for the safety of our other members," Prince said. "We've never had a kidnapping before in the long history of our organization," which has had members in Iraq since October 2002.
Despite the kidnapping incident on Saturday, Nov. 26, Prince said the organization does not want any violent action taken to rescue Fox and his teammates, Norman Kember, 74, from London; James Loney, 41, from Toronto; and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, from Canada.
"One thing we have always been very clear about, and especially the Iraq team, is that we don't ever want violence to be used, even to save our own lives," Prince said. "We do not want violence used to rescue us. We are pursuing all nonviolent options possible and are working with some very creative people to find a solution to this problem."