MACON, Mississippi, 10 May 2004 — Thomas Hamill, who has returned to the United States after escaping his abductors in Iraq, said his captors treated him more harshly after they saw pictures of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

“I’m not going into the details, but my treatment had changed and I was afraid it was to going to get a lot worse,” he told reporters outside his home in the southern state of Mississippi.

Hamill was captured when his convoy was ambushed April 9 near Abu Ghraib, the town home to the prison where photos were taken of US soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees.

After the photos were published in US media, “that’s when they started shackling me at night and that’s when I knew I needed to speed my process up and try to get away,” Hamill said.

Hamill, 44, returned to a hero’s welcome in his hometown on Saturday.

He slipped away from his captors by chance, after the sole guard outside the tiny hut where he was held ran away as a routine US patrol passed by yesterday.

His rescuers in the patrol thought the shoeless man running toward them was an Iraqi farmer until he got closer and yelled: “I’m an American.”

Immediately after his capture, a videotape of Hamill was sent out by his captors, who threatened to kill him within 12 hours if US troops did not end their siege of the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. He was caught on camera in the back of a car flanked by armed insurgents.

Hamill, a struggling dairy farmer, had gone to Iraq to work for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the US giant Halliburton, to earn extra money.

Canada Peace Tunnel

Meanwhile, in Vancouver peace activists have rebuilt an “underground railroad” into Canada, where thousands of Americans dodged the Vietnam War draft, to help US soldiers flee duty in Iraq.

Activists responded to a steady flow of US casualties in Iraq, a growing number of reservists heading to war zones and dark warnings that Congress might bring back the draft. While the number of fugitives fleeing from US duty to Canada has only been a trickle, at least two US deserters have been taken in by Quaker families in Ontario.

Several other US soldiers are thought to be in Canada, after going AWOL from their units. Sarah Bjorknas, 34, a library clerk from Vancouver, was recruited into the peace movement by a Utah academic worried the US government may heed some calls from Congress and reinstitute a draft.

“I’m doing this because I don’t believe war will solve the world’s problems and so I don’t think people should be compelled to participate in something they don’t believe in,” she said.

Bjorknas is offering fleeing US soldiers sanctuary at her house on the east side of Vancouver. She describes the “railroad” as a loose network of people willing to offer sanctuary to US deserters.

The original underground railroad helped US blacks escape slavery to northern US states.

Two US soldiers who refused duty in Iraq have already made it across the border and have launched longshot bids at political asylum.

Brandon Hughey, 19, of the US Army 1st Cavalry Division, fled to Canada one day before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

Jeremy Hinzman, 25, of the 82nd Airborne, left with his wife and son after the US army denied his request for conscientious objector status.

Hughey said he went AWOL because he did not believe the Bush administration’s justifications for the war.

“I decided to come to Canada because I was given an order to participate in a war that I believe to be illegal and a violation of human rights and international law,” he said.

“I believed the war was launched based on lies.”

“Other soldiers didn’t understand why we were in Iraq. They just wanted to go over there and kick some ass. They were just doing it because they were told to.”

Both men have plans to argue at hearings in coming months that they face prosecution tantamount to persecution in the United States because of their strong political beliefs.

Each man has a website and has attracted sympathy in Canada, which refused US entreaties to send troops to join President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” in Iraq.

With more than 750 soldiers dead since the March 2003 invasion and the scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners in US-run jails, activists said the flow of US deserters could rise.

But they may find it harder than their Vietnam-era predecessors to find a permanent haven in Canada.

Audrey Macklin, a law professor at the University of Toronto, said the two Americans face a new battle: convincing Canadian immigration authorities that they face persecution if sent back home.

Applications to become a landed immigrant must now be made from outside Canada. And refugee claimants must prove that if shipped back home they would be persecuted, not just prosecuted.

Because the United States is a democratic society, convincing a Canadian judge that deserters faced possible persecution would be a difficult job.

“The US military provides some form of alternative service and has a process in which conscientious objectors can state their case,” said Macklin.

And although the United States can still sentence deserters to death in times of war or national emergency, it has not done so since World War II.