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| Down Under |
| Hostage's Family: We'll Pay No Ranson |
| 2005-05-06 |
| THE family of kidnapped Australian Douglas Wood is not considering payment of a ransom to secure his release, a family spokesman said today. In a DVD sent to media outlets on Monday, the 63-year-old Australian-born engineer pleaded for his life and begged Australia, the US and Britain to withdraw from the war-torn country. Mr Wood's brothers Malcolm and Vernon release a videotaped statement via al-Jazeera television in Iraq on Wednesday, saying the 63-year-old could die if he failed to receive medication for a heart condition. A family spokesman today rejected claims in today's Daily Telegraph that the Woods were contemplating putting up a ransom if the terrorists threatening the engineer agreed to release him in return. Meanwhile, an Iraqi Sunni sheik contacted to intercede with insurgents holding Australian hostage Douglas Wood has reportedly promised to get the captive released alive. Australian journalist Paul McGeough said he had shown a video of the Wood family pleading for their brother to be released to Sheik Hassan Zadaan and he promised to return Mr Wood alive. Mr McGeough said it was "highly probable that he laid eyes on Douglas Wood". "I understand from him that Douglas Wood is being held about 30km from Baghdad which puts him in that south-west arc from the city," Mr McGeough said. However, the sheik did report that Mr Wood appeared to be in the hands of Islamic extremists possibly associated with the network of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. "He (the sheik) suggested that they were aligned rather than a part of, when he described them as Salafists," said Mr McGeough, a Fairfax journalist. "Salafism is a virulent strain of Islamist thinking that is the core of the Zarqawi view of the world. So to that extent they are aligned." Salafists are radical Islamics who condone the killing of non-believers in the name of purifying their faith. The word Salafi refers to the companions of the Prophet Mohammed, or the first three generations of Muslims. Salafis hold the traditionalist view that these generations were the perfect example of how Islam should be lived and practised. Most Salafis claim to be peaceful and strictly guided by the Koran. Salafists are followers of neo-Salafism, a violent and radical interpretation of this belief. They aim to purify Islam through such radical means as the oppression of women, intolerance for other faiths and, more recently, the sanctioning of terrorist violence, according to a media guide to Islam produced by the Centre for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University. The Australian government has already banned a salafist organisation known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The group is also listed as a banned terrorist organisation by the UN and the US Government. It was founded in 1998 as a splinter group of the Armed Islamic Group, one of Algeria's most radical and violence Islamist extremist groups. An ASIO briefing paper says the 3000-member Salafist Group has been responsible for the kidnapping of western tourists, robberies and assassinations - mainly in Algeria - as well as making statements in support of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. Sheik Hassan has reportedly been contacted by member of the Australian team despatched to Baghdad to liaise with US, British and Iraqi officials in a bid to secure Mr Wood's release. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was unwilling to provide details of what the taskforce was doing to get Mr Wood freed. But he said there was optimism that Mr Wood was still alive and they were working hard to have him released. "We are optimistic that we can still succeed (in having Mr Wood freed) but there's still a long way to go and we just can't be sure," Mr Downer told ABC radio. "We have no information that he is dead. "Our team ... has spoken to a large number of people; we're certainly confident he is alive and we're still very determined to get him out." |
| Posted by:God Save The World |
| #1 Looks to me as if it is time to send in the |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2005-05-06 09:57 |