Family of Australian hostage offers Iraq donation
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-09 16:54

The family of an Australian held hostage by Iraqi militants pledged a donation to the Iraqi people on Monday as a deadline loomed to meet his captors' demands and the leader of Australia's Muslims made a mercy dash to Baghdad.

Malcolm Wood asked for the group holding his brother Douglas, a 63-year-old engineer who lives in California and is married to an American, to tell them how they would like the Wood family's donation to be spent.

"This is not a ransom. There has been no demand for a ransom," said Malcolm Wood, whose brother has been held hostage for more than a week.

An image taken from a video shown on Qatari-based al-Jazeera news channel shows Australian hostage Douglas Wood pleading for his life in Iraq as two men point guns at his head. [AFP/file]

"It is not clear yet what nature of group it is that is holding Douglas, therefore it is difficult to know what kind of response is the most appropriate," he told reporters.

Malcolm Wood, who said he had spoken to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, did not disclose the value of the donation.

The Wood family's message was also being delivered to Baghdad by the controversial leader of Australia's Muslims, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who left Sydney on Monday to travel to Iraq, but was unlikely to arrive before the militants' deadline expired.

The militants have demanded that Australia withdraw its troops from Iraq by Tuesday morning or they will kill Wood.

"Our experience of the past days had forced us to reflect on the many difficulties, sorrows, humiliations experienced by the people of Iraq, who are our fellow brothers and sisters," the statement from the Wood family read.

"We are moved, therefore, to help and to share the burden. To this end ... the family of Douglas Wood will be making a generous charitable donation to help the people of Iraq."

A spokesman for Australia's Islamic community told Reuters that Al-Hilali, who made an appeal in Arabic to the militants on Al Jazeera television at the weekend, hoped Wood's captors had heard the plea and would extend the deadline.

"We are going to Iraq to help our Australian brother. We feel for Australians and we will do our best to bring our brother, Douglas Wood, home," Al-Hilali told reporters at Sydney airport.

CONTROVERSIAL MUFTI

The outspoken Al-Hilali is the 64-year-old Mufti of Australia's 300,000 Muslims, who make up about 1.5 percent of the nation's 20 million population.

He hit headlines in 2003 when he was charged with assaulting and hindering police and resisting arrest after his car was pulled over. The charges were later dropped.

Egyptian-born Al-Hilali was under the spotlight again in 2004 when he described the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States as "God's work against the oppressors." He later said his statement had been misinterpreted.

Al-Hilali, who migrated to Australia more than two decades ago, also publicly declared his opposition to the war on Iraq.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said that Wood may have been kidnapped from his Baghdad apartment up to two days before a two-minute video was delivered to news agencies in Baghdad eight days ago.

That video showed Wood pleading at gunpoint for Australia, Britain and the United States to withdraw troops from Iraq. A second video was released on Friday, setting the deadline.

Al-Hilali told the militants in his televised appeal that he valued their jihad, or holy war, but called upon them to release Wood for the sake of the Australian society, "which does not support (Prime Minister John) Howard's pro-American policies."

Australia's conservative government, a staunch U.S. ally that was among the first to join the war on Iraq two years ago, has stood firm on its refusal to give in to the militants.

A new batch of 450 Australian troops are due to arrive in southern Iraq in the coming weeks to provide security and train the Iraqi army. They will take the total number of Australian troops in and around Iraq to about 1,400.

Opinion polls taken in May last year showed that nearly two-thirds of Australians believed the war on Iraq was unjustified. Half of Australians believed it was not worth sending troops to Iraq, while 40 percent backed the decision.

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