The Hindu : Front Page : Top Hizb ideologue held

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Friday, Apr 04, 2008
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Top Hizb ideologue held

Praveen Swami

NEW DELHI: Police in Jammu and Kashmir have arrested the Hizb ul-Mujahideen’s top surviving ideologue, Abdul Khaliq Dar.

Code-named ‘Junaid ul-Islam,’ Dar was well known to journalists in Jammu and Kashmir as the official spokesperson of the Hizb.

He also had a less public role as a strategist and advisor who helped provide the Pakistan-based leadership of the Hizb with a sense of the public concerns and political conditions in the State.

Based there for the past four years, Dar had authored the text of the organisation’s 2003 unilateral ceasefire declaration — part of a Research and Analysis Wing-facilitated secret engagement between doves in the terrorist group and Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government.

A long-standing Jamaat-e-Islami activist, Dar crossed the Line of Control in 1990. He was later charged with delivering lectures at Hizb camps. He then served as an administrator at the Hizb’s Rawalpindi office, and as head of its radio station, Sada-i-Hurriyat (Voice of Freedom).

Dar is one of a string of top-ranking Hizb leaders to have been arrested or killed in recent months in a police offensive which has left the organisation rudderless.

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