Harmeet Singh Sooden

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Norman Kember and Harmeet Singh Sooden were held hostage, as depicted here on Al Jazeera television.

Harmeet Singh Sooden (born March 24, 1973) is a Canadian peace activist working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. From November 26, 2005, he was held captive in Iraq with three others and threatened with execution until being freed by multinational forces in an operation on March 23, 2006.^[1]

Sooden was born and raised in Zambia. He is a member of the Sikh religion by faith. His mother Manjeet Kaur Sooden and father Dalip Singh Sooden are from Kashmir, where his grandparents still live.^[2] He has one sister, Preety Brewer, married to a New Zealand man.

Despite going to Iraq with the "Christian" Peacemakers, Harmeet had this to say about his faith: Friends and family don’t consider me a Christian although I do have the confidence to identify myself as such if I wish. Some consider me a Sikh, some an atheist; others prefer to think of me as possessing secular values.

Sooden studied electrical engineering at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.^[3] Soon afterwards he obtained Canadian citizenship. In April 2003 he moved to join his family in Auckland, New Zealand. He is presently enrolled as a post-graduate student in English literature at University of Auckland. He is a member of the University of Auckland chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that campaigns for the Palestinian cause.

On 23 July, 2006, Harmeet did an extensive interview with journalist Sahar Ghumkhor in which he discussed his reflections on his visits in Iraq before the kidpnapping, his captivity, his release and the response of the media. ^[4]