Tuesday, June 21, 2005
INACCURACIES ALLEGED
News Ltd’s Patrick Walters reports:
Senior government and defence sources have directly contradicted weekend reports by journalist Paul McGeough, who claimed that Australian raids on the home of Sheik Hassan Zadaan had delayed the effort to free Mr Wood from his captors.
The sources also confirmed that raids by Australian and US forces on Sheik Zadaan and a number of other targets in Iraq during the Australian engineer’s 47-day ordeal made “no difference” to Mr Wood’s fate.
The inflated claims of the high-profile Fairfax journalist about supposed intermediaries are coming under sharper focus in the wake of Mr Wood’s dramatic rescue last week. It now appears that claims the raid that freed Mr Wood had damaged the rescue hopes for two other Iraqis are also unfounded, as the men were killed several weeks ago.
It is the second time the reporter has been accused of inaccuracy after senior Bush administration officials discredited a story in July last year in which he claimed the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, had pulled a pistol and executed up to six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station just days before Washington handed over control to his interim government.
Interesting.
Claims by a senior Sydney Muslim cleric that Iraqi forces risked the lives of two hostages during the rescue of Douglas Woods has been questioned - because the pair were murdered last month.
The men, Faris Shakir and Adel Farhaway Najm, who were snatched with Mr Wood in April, were shot after being tortured.
Their bodies were dumped in a rubbish tip in mid-May. Their corpses were held by police and their families identified them on June 17. They were immediately buried.
Despite this, Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly yesterday continued to insist that he was still seriously worried about the two men.