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It’s been difficult to keep track of Australian mufti Sheikh Taj El Din al-Hilali’s attempts to negotiate kidnap victim Douglas Wood’s freedom. To assist, here’s a timeline. Some confusion, likely due to the difficulties of reporting a breaking story, is evident; other aspects seem harder to explain.
May 2 Australian engineer Douglas Wood, kidnapped in April, appears in a video released by his captors. He pleads for Australian Prime Minister John Howard to save his life by withdrawing troops from Iraq.
May 8 Wood, beaten and shaved bald, appears in a second video. His captors set a 72-hour deadline for Australia to remove its troops. Wood pleads: “Move out of Iraq or I will be killed.”
May 9 Wood’s family announces that the offer of a “generous charitable donation” will accompany Sheikh Taj El Din al-Hilali on his journey to Iraq. The Sheikh tells Wood’s kidnappers in a video broadcast by al-Jazeera: “We value your jihad and your efforts. We call upon you to do something for the sake of our community and all Australian society, which does not support (Prime Minister John) Howard’s pro-American policies.”
May 9 The Sheikh begins his trip, which is funded by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. A spokesman says that “we have been appealing for [Wood’s kidnappers] to extend the time, the deadline, and this is what he is hoping that they will extend it, has been very helpful, and the message has gone through that [the Sheikh] is coming, and he will be trying to reach the captors through the contacts in Iraq. That would be the first thing that he would be doing.”
May 12 The Sheikh arrives in Baghdad, and reports: “We have to deal with the situation as if someone had been shot in the head in front of our eyes and I have to extract the bullet without affecting the nerves and killing the person! So we are moving between the red lines with wisdom and patience to reach the perfect solution. Because we also consider this to be our personal matter and you know the difficult health conditions I am currently enduring but may God give us strength and guidance to complete this mission.”
May 15 Iraq the Model notes a rumour that the Australian government is negotiating a $10 million deal for Wood’s release, said to be due within 48 hours.
May 16 Sheikh al-Hilali announces an expected breakthough. Says spokesman Keysar Trad: “The messages and the signals that he’s been getting from people are not only that Mr Wood is alive, but he will be hearing about the new conditions from the kidnappers within 48 hours ... or sooner if things go well.” The Herald Sun reports that Sheikh al-Hilali “is said to be promising a seven-figure ‘charitable donation’ to the armed militants in exchange for Mr Wood’s release.”
May 16 “We hope that this day will bring us a final answer,” Sheikh al-Hilali tells the ABC. “I have information that the group holding Douglas Wood has extended its deadline indefinitely. However, a decision on Mr Wood’s fate depends on some leaders who are busy fighting the Americans in al-Qaim. At the moment they cannot be reached.” The Sheikh claims Wood was betrayed: “The interpreter who was with Douglas Wood delivered him, another engineer and a bodyguard to the kidnappers. That interpreter has vanished.” Wood’s US connections are blamed for his delayed release: “The other fact is that Mr Wood had worked with the American company Bechtel, and without that we could’ve probably freed Mr Wood on the first day of our arrival here.”
May 18 Sheikh al-Hilali says he has spoken to Douglas Wood. “After telling him who they are they put him on to an English-speaking gentleman, who indicated to the mufti that he was Mr Wood and that he was well,” a spokesman reports.
May 18 SBS radio journalist Majida Abboud-Saab reports that Wood’s captors are set to release him: “They are not placing any conditions on his release. He (al-Hilali) is very convinced and he is very optimistic and he is very happy about the fact that they have agreed to release Douglas.”
May 18 Abboud-Saab, who has interviewed the Sheikh, reveals that Wood’s release is conditional on the release of two Iraqi captives: “[The Sheikh] said that had it not been for the fact that there was a problem with the fact that the other two Iraqis weren’t going to be released, it may have been as soon as today.”
May 20 Sheikh al-Hilali leaves Baghdad: “When the Herald spoke to the mufti in Baghdad on Wednesday, he was checking out of his city hotel before flying to Dubai for medical treatment. He expected to be back in Iraq within a ‘a day or two’. He has not been heard from since.”
May 21 Iraqi police specialist Jabar Abu Natiha tells the SMH’s Paul McGeough: “There are good reasons to believe [Wood] will be released - if they execute him they will achieve nothing; but if he is freed the mufti will have a good story to tell about them because they will be seen to be helping the mufti, not the authorities.” The Sheikh’s Sydney spokesman says Wood’s captors have added new conditions for his release: the withdrawal of foreign troops from a particular part of Iraq and a halt to American counter-insurgency strikes in the west of the country. He also claims that the large US military presence is making it difficult for the hostage takers to move Wood to an area in which he might be freed.
May 23 The Age reports that a plan to release Wood may have gone astray: “[Sheikh al-Hilali’s] Sydney-based spokesman, Keysar Trad, said yesterday Sheikh Hilali had received a phone call about 90 minutes before he checked out of Baghdad’s Babylon Hotel saying Mr Wood ‘could be released within the hour’. Nothing more was heard.” The paper also reports that the Sheikh didn’t leave Baghdad for medical treatment, but because “contact with Mr Wood’s captors was more likely to succeed if he left the country.”
May 26 Sheikh al-Hilali offers to trade places with Douglas Wood. Says Keysar Trad: “They promised to set him free before without these conditions but the Mufti’s now trying to force their hand and trying to get them to make a move and release Mr Wood.”
May 30 SBS radio’s Majida Abboud-Saab reports that tribal leaders have asked that the Sheikh “return immediately” to Iraq: “The return means the release is imminent because the kidnappers have said they would hand Douglas Wood to the sheik personally.”
June 3 Back in Iraq, Sheikh al-Hilali calls on Wood’s captors to release him—and for coalition forces to leave Iraq, and detainees to be freed from military prisons.
June 3 “We hope, God willing, that within the next few hours to hear the news of the hostage’s release,” says al-Hilali after attending a Baghdad mosque. In Sydney, Trad reports that the Sheikh has learned Wood was recently moved to a safer location, but could not be released because of ongoing fighting.
June 5 The Sheikh meets Douglas Wood, according to the Federation of Islamic Councils’ Ikebal Patel: “He said to me: ‘I’ve seen him eye to eye’, those were the words he used, eye to eye, it was Douglas.”
June 6 Patel explains why Wood remains in captivity: “The mufti is finding it more and more difficult that on the one hand he is negotiating with people for the good of a person and representing Australia, and Australian soldiers have behaved very admirably, but the information he’s giving is that the Americans aren’t giving any respect to the grass roots Iraqis and therefore the negotiations have bogged down because he has pleaded that people should be treated with respect in Iraq and that is not happening.” The Sheikh himself tells AP television: “I swear that Mr Douglas Wood is still alive and (is in) honest hands and with people who have an issue.”
June 6 Sheikh al-Hilali tells AP that he hasn’t physically met Wood: “I have seen a recent CD video lasting 12 to 15 minutes where Wood is alive and good and in honest hands. He looked normal and said ‘I am OK, I am fine’ and that he needs help from his family and the government.” The Sheikh adds: “God willing, Mr Douglas will be free in a short time.”
To be updated. God willing, Douglas Wood will be free in a short time; and if Sheikh al-Hilali helps achieve that, Australia will thank him.
I just love the description of Wood’s captors as “good and honest” (Fairfax today).
Hilaly says that the captors have “an issue”: I’ll say its called psychopathic behaviour. They are rationalising their violent, criminal urges under a pseudo-political mask. Like all people who need to wear a mask, they are ultimately gutless cowards.
Some of your past criticisms have been fair, some not so. Nonetheless, this chronology demonstrates the commitment that Hilali has made to the cause, whatever the perceived inadequacies of the media reportage. Wood’s family seems grateful for Hilali’s efforts.
I, too, hope that Wood will soon be free.
Just ‘whose’ cause nwab?
He arrives in an unknown country and can immediately hook up with the relevant badmashes. What did he do? Go to a mosque and whisper the right words? Go to the souq and say a code phrase?When he does find information, its not given to the Government, its sent to an Islamic group in Australia who then have any number of spokesmen appearing on TV. The Fairfax press have also been trumpeting the ‘I have seen him and he’s ok’ line, when it turns out its not true.
One wonders whose cause is being also fought out here.
I hope that Wood is free as well, safely and soon.
But it strikes me that the “good Sheik” is in this for his own reasons, not because he is concerned about Woods. The terrorists/kidnappers have committed acts that are considered crimes in any country. Yet the “good Sheikh” behaves as though this is a business trip.
Jesse Jackson (whom I otherwise loathe) has a 100% success rate in freeing hostages in similar situations. This includes US military personnel. And he treats these matters a whole lot more seriously than Sheik Hilali is. So my suspicions are based on the comparisons of results, not right wing prejudices.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 06 at 08:24 PM • permalinkI gotta tell you, I don’t get this al-Hilali guy.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2005 06 06 at 08:28 PM • permalinkSomething smells to high heaven. Hillbilly has a record of saying nice things in his broken English or via translator.
Now try reading transcripts of his sermons on Arabic! He preached violence and hate against mainstream (Christian) Australian society, especially when overseas. His speeches here are much more guarded now, but the central theme is still that of destroying Australian society as it presently stands and replacing it with an Islamicised one.
Now we have this little dance. Every time he drops out of page es1 or 2 in the MSM, he re-activates the dance. Woods appears to be being used as a shuttlecock in a particularly gruesome game.
I suspect this is more about advancing Hillbilly’s pro-Wahabist causes, and his aims to destroy Australian society, than anything else.
MarkL
CanberraThe only contribution Al Hillbilly has made to this sordid criminal act is to muddy the water and give the criminals a cloak of psuedo respectability.
I can’t be bothered listening to his mystical BS any more.
His time is gone.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 06 06 at 10:23 PM • permalinkIs this guy really a Sheikh? Is his status as Mufti of Australia something bogus that he has made up and bestowed upon himself or does it actually mean something? I suspect it would be like me calling myself ‘Sheikh Ian, Chief Vegetarian of Australia’...and doing it for long enough and often enough that some dopey vegetarians started to believe it.
Maybe his antics is to do with negoiating a ransom for Woods on behalf of his family. Saying things to the press could be a way of talking to the terrorists. Saying they are warm and fuzzy people with feelings, Australians in Iraq are decent people, and then poo-pooing on the yanks.
It does make sense that way. Hopefully it shall get Woods back safe and in one peice. This Sheikh guy does seem dodgy though. He has said things about non-musilms which would land a Christian in jail for vilification in this country. Hopefully, while he may be self-serving, he may get Woods back.
Hilaly went over to the muslim kitchen and can take the heat and likes what he sees, the New World Order
I think we have given far too much attention to this lying deceiving dickhead. His words are worth nothing. His actions are contemptible.
How many more statements are we supposed to endure before it becomes completely obvious that he is in league with the kidnappers and has been actively working against Australia’s interest from the start of this whole sorry media fest.
I doubt that Douglas Woods is alive. A hundred bucks to a worthy charity says this guy achieves zilch except a whole lot of attention for “muslim insurgents”. Face reality folks.If the Sheikh can’t even get a proper consistant message back to Australia, what hope does he have in navigating the communication lines in Iraq?
I am not a big fan of the Sheikh and I am not sure about his motives either.
But I think he is our best bet at getting Mr. Wood released.
captian says:
Hilaly says that the captors have “an issue”: I’ll say its called psychopathic behaviour. They are rationalising their violent, criminal urges under a pseudo-political mask.
Duh.
I know that, you know that, the Sheikh knows that, everyone except the kidnappers themselves know that.
What would be the purpose of berating them? Other than to make yourself feel better? If someone in the Australian press wants to give vent to their anger or whatever, please visit a therapist instead of putting an Australian’s life at risk.
MarkL suggests:
Now try reading transcripts of his sermons on Arabic! He preached violence and hate against mainstream (Christian) Australian society
Where can I find these? Do they have translations?
Posted by The_Consigliere on 2005 06 07 at 05:14 AM • permalinkThe terrorists are using this so called Mufti to draw attention to themselves. There will be no exchange without a huge ransom which will only fuel more hostage taking. I feel sorry for Mr. Wood and his family, but there is not going to be any withdrawal of American or Australian troops over this.
Mufti baby ought to get back to preaching hate in Sydney.
Careful nwab, getting the attention of the wrong people will only get your brain washed again.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 07 at 11:01 AM • permalinkOne for the pedants:
The gentleman’s name is Wood, not Woods.
If you are talking to pedants, nwab, are you talking to yourself?
As for your problem with the Australisn government, just remember that after the US elections last year, most of the American lefties were having a hard time getting into Canada and New Zealand. Perhaps you could emigrate to the few surviving hard core socialist nations, China, Cuba, or North Korea.
(Yeah, I know that you didn’t state your intentions to emigrate in post #23, I just thought I’d extrapolate using your “logic”)
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 07 at 05:49 PM • permalinkJeffS, the pedantic theme is in the MediaWatch thread.
My “problem” with Lord Downer and his Department - and the Aust Govt in general - is much the same as your “suspicion” about Hilali. I question the motives of Australian foreign policy - and by extension I have my doubts about Downer’s aims in both the Corby and Wood situations.
Being cynical or sceptical about your own government does not make you a communist - in fact, it’s a great Australian tradition. I did much the same under Hawke and Keating. And nor does being a cynic mean you intend to emigrate.
Scepticism of any government is a good idea; indeed, I view it as an obligation of an intelligent citizen. Unless it borders as a pathological obsession, whereupon I start looking for people wearing tin foil hats.
I use the term “pathological obsession” because of your earlier rants on other threads, not solely because of your comments here.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 08 at 01:12 AM • permalink
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I really, really hope the part about Australia paying a ransom isn’t true.