MUZAFFARABAD, Sept 30: The Harkatul Mujahideen on Sunday denied reports that any of its offices in Azad Kashmir had been closed or its cadres had gone into hiding.

“Our offices are working as usual. No one can close those on the soil of Kashmir, because we are engaged in a just and legitimate struggle for freedom of Kashmir from Indian yoke,” Harkat spokesman Amiruddin Mughal said in a statement.

The statement came after a foreign news agency released a story on Saturday claiming that seven offices of the Harkatul Mujahideen were closed in Azad Kashmir, and its leaders had gone underground, following the group’s inclusion by the US on a list of 27 organizations and individuals identified as linked to terrorism.

“Kashmir is our homeland and no one can force us to wind up our offices here,” Mughal said, adding the Harkat offices in Kashmir would close on the day when the camps of the Indian occupation forces would be closed.

He reiterated his group’s stance that it was not involved in any kind of terrorism, nor it was interfering in any other country. “Therefore no one should interfere in our affairs.”

However, it was learnt that the group was planning to shift its main office from its present location in the AJK capital to some other locality, in the wake of the US decision.

But a Harkat office-bearer denied that the shifting had any link with the US proclamation and said it was an “administrative decision of the group leaders under consideration for the past five months.”

“Since our office in Muzaffarabad is the central office, and the accommodation in the present building is rather cramped, we were planning to shift somewhere else,” Ammar Mehdi, secretary information of the Harkatul Mujahideen told Dawn by telephone from Islamabad on Sunday.

Sources in the group, who did not want to be named, told this correspondent that since their main office was located in a prominent area of the AJK capital, they had decided on their own to move it to some “less visited locality.”

The office of the Harkatul Mujahideen in Muzaffarabad is located for the past many years in a rented building in the Upper Chattar locality, home to many important government offices, such as a telephone exchange and the State Bank of Pakistan branch.

There were reports that the authorities too had “suggested or advised” the Harkat leaders to shift their office, but Mr Mehdi denied that there was any pressure from the governments of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, in this regard. Both telephone connections of the group were disconnected on Saturday evening for non-payment of bills, according to the telephone department.

“The only pressure we have is due to the freezing of our bank accounts. It certainly has created problems for us, but nevertheless we cannot stop what we are doing (jihad). We will carry on our noble mission till we achieve the goal,” he said.

AJK Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan on Sunday also denied that the Harkatul Mujahideen offices in Azad Kashmir had been closed or the government was banning the group.

“The Harkatul Mujahideen and other Kashmiri groups are doing jihad against Indian terrorism in held Kashmir. And to us not only those who are engaged in jihad but also those who help them are highly reverend,” said the premier in response to this reporter’s question at a news conference. He also rejected US allegations that Harkatul Mujahideen was linked to terrorism.

In 1999 the US had declared the Harkatul Mujahideen a terrorist organization. The State Department in its report, Patterns of Global Terrorism for the year 2000, released on April 30, this year had claimed that the Harkat chief Farooq Kashmiri was linked to Osama Bin Laden, prime suspect in Sept 11 attacks in New York and Pentagon.

The group which has to its credit several successful actions against the Indian soldiers in held Kashmir said it condemned terrorism in all its shapes because it was part of Muslims’ faith not to kill the innocent people, whatever may be their religion.