Helpless wait for hostage's NZ family

Harmeet Sooden with his niece

Kidnapped Auckland student Harmeet Singh Sooden's sister is agonising over whether to travel to Iraq to join efforts to release him and three other hostages.

"If I could help, I'd go tomorrow," Preety Brewer said in Auckland yesterday while waiting with her mother for more word of Mr Sooden, who was shown on television with his fellow captives sitting cross-legged and bound on a floor.

"It's totally frustrating. We didn't sleep last night, or the night before that, or the night before that," she said at her home in Blockhouse Bay.

Mr Sooden, 32, and three other volunteers for the North American-based Christian Peacemaker Teams were seized at gunpoint six days ago in west Baghdad, shortly after their arrival from Jordan on a two-week fact-finding visit.

They were visiting a CPT team working with local people outside a green security zone maintained by coalition forces.

Mrs Brewer said the last she heard from her brother was a one-line email from Baghdad late last week saying simply that "he was there and okay, that it was happening".

That was followed at 4am on Sunday by a message from a CPT member, who phoned back to say her brother had been kidnapped.

"To be honest, it still hasn't sunk in," she said. "We didn't know what to think. We didn't believe it was him until we saw the images on CNN."

Nothing has been heard of the four captured men, including 74-year-old retired British medical professor James Kember, since the Arab TV channel al-Jazeera showed grainy video footage of them.

The date shown on the video was November 27, the day after the men were captured near the start of their visit to Iraq.

The hostage-takers, calling themselves the Swords of the Righteous Brigade, have yet to make any demands, and Mrs Brewer prays that the absence of any further word from the group is a good sign.

Mr Sooden is understood to have gone to Iraq on his way to the West Bank to rejoin activists supporting efforts to free Palestinian territory from Israeli occupation, having spent last summer there before enrolling at Auckland University.

A Canadian citizen of Kashmiri parentage, he gained his first degree in electrical engineering in Montreal. This year he did a transitional course at Auckland as a prerequisite to doing a post-graduate degree in English literature.

As the Canadian Government and CPT keep trying to establish contact with the hostage-takers, Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah intend demonstrating today to appeal for the prisoners' release.

"We demand that these aid workers be released immediately," the Palestinians' top Muslim cleric, Mufti Ikremi Sabri, said yesterday.

"We tell them that these aid workers have stood beside Palestinian people and it's our duty now to stand beside them."

Prime Minister Helen Clark last night expressed grave concern for Mr Sooden's safety.

"The Prime Minister is very concerned for the fate of Harmeet Sooden," a spokeswoman said.

"She is aware he has been a New Zealand resident for three years and therefore has many friends and contacts in New Zealand who will be very, very worried for him."

The spokeswoman said the Canadian Government was taking the diplomatic lead in trying to obtain the prisoners' release.

A CPT spokeswoman in Chicago said the group was strongly opposed to the use of military force to secure the release of any members taken hostage.

Mrs Brewer said she had always been close to her older brother, a man used to travelling to dangerous areas but who wanted to settle in New Zealand, where his family is.

"We are a global family and not afraid of travel. He does that to further his beliefs.

"He goes anywhere there is trouble. I'm not saying he's Superman, but he would look at what he could do to help."

She and her husband, Mark Brewer, are trying to get a visa for her father to travel from Zambia to join the vigil.

Mr Brewer said the Canadians had told the family it was often seven to 10 days before kidnappers made demands.

"But we're also conscious that every day that goes by is a day where he's not where he wants to be."


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Touched by a hug from a 3-year-old


Harmeet Sooden did not get to spend long in Iraq before his kidnapping, but he was touched there by the plight of a child who reminded him of his two-year-old niece in Auckland.

"A little 3-year-old girl, Alaa, ran up to me and gave me a big hug yesterday," he wrote in an email to an organisation of Palestinian supporters called the International Solidarity Movement.

He had hoped to join the group on the West Bank after a two-week visit to Iraq.

"She reminds me of my niece," he said.

"She, however, does not see as my niece sees. She sustained severe shrapnel injuries to her abdomen and micro-fragments peppered her eyes, face and body during a US military attack in May on al Qaim, Iraq. Her mother lost an eye, she lost two brothers and several older relatives."

The email is a particularly poignant memo to the solidarity movement. One of its members, 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death by a bulldozer in 2003 as she tried to stop the Israeli Army destroying Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip.

Mr Sooden spent several weeks with the group in Palestinian territory last summer, and intended rejoining it for another three months after visiting Iraq with the North American pacifist organisation Christian Peacemaker Teams.

His brother-in-law in Auckland, Mark Brewer, told the Herald yesterday that Mr Sooden was not religious "though something like this could make you religious".

But his sister, Preety Brewer, said he was "passionate" about his causes.

"We grew up in Zambia, a developing country, so you see poverty every day around you," she said. "People like my family are considered wealthy there - I guess that's where it all stems from."

Fervent pleas came yesterday from friends in Auckland.

Daniele Abreau, a PhD student at Auckland University, said she did not know how to help Harmeet.

"I know that sometimes when the kidnappers have a better image of those they hold captive, there is a better chance they will free them."

"I thought that you should know a little about this brave and sensible pacifist who loves Shakespeare and humanity," she said in an email to the Herald.

She said her friend dedicated his life to helping people but never called attention to himself. "His help could be as simple as in school assignments or in a very serious matter such as raising funds for Kashmir earthquake victims. He always fought against prejudice of any kind."

"He knew the risk of this trip ... he said it was the only thing he could do to help."