Iraqi Kidnappers Extend Deadline Two Days

Iraqi policeman Khalid Salih, 28, mourns a slain colleague outside the hospital in Kirkuk in northern Iraq Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2005. Gunmen killed three police officers early Wednesday when they burst into a hospital in the northern city of Kirkuk and freed a wounded man who had been arrested for plotting to kill a judge in the Saddam Hussein trial, police said. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed) (Yahya Ahmed - AP)

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Kidnappers extended a deadline until Saturday in their threat to kill four captive peace activists and posted a video of two of the hostages wearing orange jumpsuits and shackled with chains.

The original deadline set by the group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness was Thursday. The extension was announced in a statement that accompanied Wednesday's video, according to Al-Jazeera and IntelCenter, a government contractor that does support work for the U.S. intelligence community.

Norman Kember, 74, of London, Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., and the Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, were taken hostage in Baghdad two weeks ago.

They were working for the Christian Peacemaker Teams, an anti-war group, and are among seven Westerners who have been abducted in Iraq since Nov. 25. The other hostages are an American, a German and a Frenchman.

The other American in captivity was shown Tuesday on a separate insurgent video broadcast on Al-Jazeera. On Wednesday, his brother in the United States identified the captive as Ronald Schulz, 40, an industrial electrician from Alaska.

"I don't want to get my brother killed," Ed Schulz said. "But the fact that he has blond hair and blue eyes might get him killed."

Videotape of the Christian peace activists provided by IntelCenter to AP Television News showed two men, who were blindfolded and shackled. The men were not identified, but still photos from IntelCenter showed they were Fox and Kember. The two other hostages were not shown.

Unlike the civilian clothing they were wearing in two earlier videos, this time the hostages were wearing orange jumpsuits.

A brief excerpt from the videotape also was transmitted on Wednesday by al-Jazeera but did not show faces of the two shackled figures.

The two captives made statements condemning the U.S. and British presence in Iraq. Both men were instructed to give their statements twice, which they did without reading a text because they were blindfolded. As a result, each man's second statement was slightly different from his first.

"I'd like to offer my plea to the people of America, not the government of America, a plea for my release from captivity and also a plea for a release from captivity of all the people of Iraq who are also suffering the same fate," Fox said. "And that is the occupation of the American troops and the British troops which has brought me to this condition and has brought the Iraqi people to the condition they're in."

"So I would ask the American people to do what they can to free us all from this captivity," he added.