re:wood's release!! a negotiated deal??>
From Crikey.com
. Douglas Wood, the Sheik and the Bolt-Akerman tirades
Foreign minister Alexander Downer confirmed on Sky News this morning that the rescue of hostage Douglas Wood in Iraq yesterday was "the result of a tip-off that was received from an intelligence source."
The foreign minister, and Wood's family, also offered their public appreciation of the contribution of Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly's role in the successful rescue of Douglas Wood.
So when should we expect the apologies from News Limited's two angry columnists, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt, who wrote tirades against the Sheik and his role in the Wood saga on consecutive days in early May?
On 10 May, under the heading: "Douglas Wood and the repulsive Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly," Akerman wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "No-one outside hostage Douglas Wood's immediate family can possibly imagine the level of despair which has led them to seek the intervention of the repulsive Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly in a bid to free the Australian from his brutal Iraqi kidnappers," and went on: "Sheik Elhilaly may live in the West but he doesn't understand and doesn't appear to appreciate our society's virtues."
A day later, Bolt followed the party line in the Herald Sun with a column headed: "Mufti mixes motives," which included comments like "Hilaly is a Sunni extremist, like the men believed to hold Wood," and: "Our senior Islamic cleric values the terrorists who kill and kidnap countless victims, most of them Iraqis. And he wants Wood freed because killing him won't help Muslims here, most Australians already think Howard is a toady, and the real enemy is America."
