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Harmeet Singh Sooden (born 24 March 1973) is a Canadian-New Zealand anti-war activist who volunteered for the international NGO Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He was held captive in Baghdad with three others for almost four months and threatened with execution until being freed by multi-national forces on 23 March 2006. Sooden was born and raised in Zambia. His parents are Sikhs from Kashmir.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/hspeacemaker.htm )〕 His great-grandfather fought for the British Indian Army in World War I and died in Basra in 1916 during the Mesopotamian Campaign. As his main inspiration for peace work, he cites his grandfather who was a career soldier in the British Indian Army and then the Indian Army. He says he was motivated by the extraordinary rendition and torture of a university classmate, Maher Arar, and the experience of a friend who survived the World Trade Center attack on 11 September 2001. Sooden holds degrees in Computer Engineering from McGill University in Montréal, Canada and English literature from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He was a member of the University of Auckland chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine. On 23 July 2006, Sooden did an extensive interview with journalist Sahar Ghumkhor, in which he discussed his reflections on his visits in Iraq before the kidnapping, his captivity, his release and the response of the media.〔 ==Christian Peacemaker Teams hostage crisis== (詳細はChristian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is an international organisation set up to support teams of peace workers in conflict areas around the world. One aspect of CPT's work in Iraq during the US occupation was to collect and publicise evidence of detainee abuse. Investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh of ''The New Yorker'' magazine, who helped to expose the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal in 2004, cited the organisation in his articles. In an interview with ''Democracy Now!'', he said: The Christian Peacemaker Teams hostage crisis precipitated when four human rights workers of CPT, James Loney, Norman Kember, Tom Fox and Harmeet Singh Sooden, were abducted in Baghdad, Iraq on 26 November 2005 by a previously unknown group, the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The kidnapping made media headlines around the world. The hostage-takers released videos accusing the men of being spies working for the coalition forces and threatening to execute them. On 9 March 2006, one of the hostages, Tom Fox, was executed, and the remaining three were freed in a military operation on 23 March 2006. Upon his return to New Zealand, Sooden was warned by Prime Minister Helen Clark not to go back to Iraq saying: "The New Zealand Government constantly says to Kiwis 'Don't go there. You are walking into a war zone. It is a very, very dangerous place and New Zealand is not represented in Iraq in any shape or form and we are not in a position to help". One of the reasons Sooden volunteered with CPT (who were in Iraq with the permission of the US Government) was to highlight New Zealand's role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Shortly after the release, both as a direct result of the kidnapping and the deteriorating security situation, CPT was compelled to leave Iraq. After a brief absence, CPT relocated to Iraqi Kurdistan.〔 Roy Hallums, a retired US Navy Commander who worked as a civilian contractor in Iraq and himself held hostage for 10 months, offered to assist the hostages in their healing process. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Harmeet Singh Sooden」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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