Senior separatist leader and head priest of Kashmir, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the grand Mufti of North Kashmir, Mufti Abdur Raheem, and other major separatist leaders have issued a passionate appeal for the safe release of Harmeet Soodan, a Kashmiri origin Canadian citizen from his captors in Iraq.The appeal came on Saturday after The Indian Express carried the story about Soodan’s abduction in Baghdad by Swords of Righteousness, an insurgent group. ‘‘The Hurriyat thinks Soodan was in Iraq to help the people there as his earlier activities in Palestine bear out. We, therefore, appeal to the captors to release him on the same humanitarian considerations which had inspired him to go to Iraq,’’ the Mirwaiz told The Indian Express while on his way to New Delhi en route to Pakistan to visit the earthquake-hit in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. ‘‘Soodan is a Kashmiri which makes it obligatory for us to make an effort for his release.’’The Mirwaiz’s views were echoed by other major separatist leaders like Shabir Shah and Sajad Gani Lone, for whom Soodan’s story is a sort of discovery about a well-meaning fellow Kashmiri. ‘‘I am aware of the great humanitarian work Soodan has done in Palestine and now had gone to perform in Iraq. Such persons I think do not have any motives and should be appreciated for their work,’’ Shah said. ‘‘I appeal to captors that no harm should come to him and he should be released soon.’’Shah said he was planning follow-up action by generating mass awareness about the global humanitarian activities of Soodan and about his concern for Kashmir.Lone, president of the People’s Conference and a vocal advocate of the ‘‘indigenisation’’ of the Kashmiri separatist politics, has also sent an appeal for Soodan’s release. ‘‘Keeping his background in view, his history of social work and his involvement in Palestine, I think Soodan went to Iraq with a noble objective to chip in with humanitarian effort,’’ Lone said. ‘‘I wish he were freed at the earliest.’’On the other, the grand Mufti of North Kashmir, Abdur Raheem of Baramulla, from where Soodan’s family hails, called for the safe release of Soodan in keeping ‘‘with the best traditions of Islamic warfare where non-combatants are not harmed’’. ‘‘I believe the captors will not harm him. As a Muslim leader I appeal to the captors to let off the unarmed people,” Raheem said and expressed sympathy with Soodan’s grandparents who live in Baramullah.
