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"God bless America": Douglas Wood
FREED Australian hostage Douglas Wood flew to a secret Middle East location last night as his relieved family prepared to make a $100,000-plus donation to Iraqi charities.
Now that's nice, and an upstanding thing to do.
The 63-year-old engineer was recovering in hospital, but doctors said he was in surprisingly good shape after his 47-day ordeal. As his family celebrated his release, details emerged of the physical and mental degradation he suffered while held in various Baghdad locations. Mr Wood, who was kidnapped on the way to work on April 30, was handcuffed and bound for much of the time he spent in captivity. His captors also "badly corrupted" information about outside relief efforts, according to Nick Warner, the head of the Government's emergency response team in Baghdad. Mr Wood's elated wife, Yvonne Given, said her husband looked "great" despite his ordeal. Mr Wood had told her: "I'm healthy; when are you going to come and get me?"

"I thought he would be weak and he sounded just up and just my Doug," she said from the couple's home in California.

Looking surprisingly strong and in good spirits, the Australian engineer celebrated the end of his incarceration with a thumbs-up and asked Australian officials in Baghdad for a beer. "God bless America. You don't know how pleased I am to see you," he told his rescuers after a morning raid by Iraqi troops on a house in the northern Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya. As the news of his rescue beamed around the globe, Mr Wood told of the fear he felt in his final moments of captivity. "I wasn't sure what was happening," he recalled. "The first thing is there was a bit of shooting outside, then they came and covered me over with a blanket. And then there was still a lot of yelling and screaming. And then a gun, they actually fired inside the room. "That was a bit scary. I heard my fellow patient -- or whatever he was -- still alive and I'm still alive." Mr Wood even described his treatment as being "pretty fair", although he said he had been kicked in the head soon after being kidnapped enroute to a business meeting in the Iraqi capital on April 30. "I'm extremely happy and relieved to be free again and deeply grateful to all those who worked to bring about my release," he said.
Posted by: Seafarious 2005-06-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=121818