SRINAGAR, 12 November 2002 — Senior separatist leader and chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Yasin Malik, who was arrested nine months ago under an anti-terrorist law, arrived here yesterday afternoon after he was released on a month’s parole.
“He is a free bird. He would reach home after we have completed a few formalities,” a police officer said.
A number of JKLF activists, including acting chairman Javed Mir, were present at Srinagar airport to receive Yasin, but he was whisked away in a police vehicle to the counter-intelligence headquarters in the high security zone of the city for competing the formalities.
Yasin had been lodged in a jail in Jammu. Yasin’s parole follows the new state government’s policy of releasing all the detained separatist leaders in a phased manner.
Police had arrested Yasin on March 25, after they seized $100,000 from a JKLF activist who said the money was meant for Yasin. He was held under the anti-terrorism Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO), which was later passed into law by Parliament as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
Sources here said that after Yasin obtained bail from the court trying him under POTA, the state government decided to release him on parole.
Since 1994, when Yasin was first released from jail after four years of detention, both the JKLF and Yasin claim the organization has changed its role and moved away from militancy to politics. Yasin is an executive member of Kashmir’s main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed has promised to free political prisoners and dismantle POTA, under which many militants and their supporters have been arrested.
Star television reported that he was one of a number of political prisoners ordered released by Sayeed.
Yasin’s release could pave the way for the release of jailed political activists such as Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Ghulam Nabi Sumji and Sheikh Abdul Aziz.
Geelani has been jailed in Jharkhand while others are in Kashmir. Sayeed, said yesterday that peace would return to the violence-torn region if the people are treated well. Sayeed took power in the state on Nov. 2 and immediately vowed to provide a “healing touch” by releasing prisoners and reining in security forces. “If people are treated well and justice dispensed, peace will gradually dawn on the state,” Sayeed said in a statement yesterday.
“There will be hardly any scope for elements inimical to peace to exploit the masses.” Sayeed said he did not immediately shake up the state administration, as is traditional in India, because he was waiting to see “the performance of each officer.” But he said he was committed to a “clean administration” that would “be accountable at all the levels.”
Meanwhile, at least seven policemen were killed yesterday when their bus struck a mine planted by suspected rebels in Kashmir, police said.
The bus was carrying members of the Central Reserve Police Force from Srinagar to Jammu when it went over the mine around midday in Ramsu village in the southern Doda district.
At least seven of the policemen were killed, including an officer, and five others injured, police said.
Police sealed off the area of the blast to search for the militants who planted the mine.
Suspected militants yesterday shot dead a National Conference activist, Ghulam Nabi Shentsaz, in downtown Srinagar, police said.
Shentsaz was general secretary of Srinagar municipality’s employees union.
