Free the Captives: Witness Against Illegal Detention and Torture

Update: we added another report with further details that came out Saturday morning.

U.S. Captive Tom Fox Killed in Iraq

An American who was among four Christian peace activists kidnapped last year in Iraq has been killed, a State Department spokesman said Friday.

Fox's family has been notified, Clay said, and "our heartfelt condolences go out to them."

"The State Department continues to call for the unconditional release of all other hostages" in Iraq, the spokesman said.

The FBI verified that a body found in Iraq Friday morning was that of Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., spokesman Noel Clay said. He said he had no information on the other three captives.

Edit: Agence France Press reports:

The body was found in a plastic bag on a garbage dump in west Baghdad, a witness and an interior ministry official said.

He had been handcuffed and shot. His tracksuited body had then been wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a plastic bag.

His back showed signs of beatings and he appeared to have been killed recently, the official said.

Iraqi police found him in a vacant lot in the upscale Al-Mansur district at around 5 pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday. Seeing he was a Westerner, the patrol immediately contacted US forces who took charge of the body.

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From the Quran:

Who is better in speech than one who calls others to God, works righteousness, and says: "I am one of those who bow in Islam." Nor can goodness and evil be equal. Repel evil with what is best. Then the one between whom and you there was hatred will become as it were your friend and intimate!

Sura 41:33-34

From the Gospels:

He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

Matthew 10:39

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

These things I command you, that ye love one another.

John 15:13-17