'Monty' signals release

[thedrifter]

'Monty' signals release
Ian McPhedran and Gemma Jones
16jun05

WHEN Douglas Wood uttered the secret word – "Monty" – the Australian rescue team knew they had their man.

Moments after Mr Wood was freed from his Iraqi captors, Americans soldiers arranged a telephone call from Mr Wood to Nick Warner, head of the Australian Government's Emergency Response Team in Baghdad.
To confirm Mr Wood's identity, Mr Warner asked him a "proof of life" question, which had been supplied by Mr Wood's family.

"What was the name of your family dog when you grew up in Geelong?" Mr Warner asked.

"We had a cat," Mr Wood replied.

"But you also had a dog," prompted Mr Warner. "That's right, a bulldog called Monty," Mr Wood responded, sparking elation that spread quickly across the nation last night.

It was a loud knock on the door that signalled the end of Mr Wood's six-week ordeal. Authorities had been tipped off by Sheik Taj el-Din el-Hilaly that Australia's first long-term hostage in Iraq was definitely at an address about an hour's drive from central Baghdad.

Finally, after several aborted attempts to rescue the engineer, heavily armed US and Iraqi troops -- with planning help from Australian SAS soldiers -- moved in.

They knocked on the door and there he was -- fragile and traumatised but reasonably well.

Not a single shot was fired and several men were taken into custody.

Sheik el-Hilaly, Islam's senior leader in Australia, said last night he conducted the "negotiation part" of the operation.

But it required the military to "lift him out".

It is understood the sheik was pulling the strings by telephone from Cairo right up until the time of the rescue mission.

A tribal elder gave the sheik the crucial tip on Sunday that Mr Wood was alive and about to be released.

Wednesday was nominated as the release date but the sheik told Sydney colleagues to keep the news quiet, fearing that hopes would be raised in Australia. After learning yesterday where Mr Wood was being held, the sheik called in the Iraqi military.

A spokesman for the sheik said last night Mr Wood was handed over at the undisclosed location in a peaceful exchange.

"The mufti had communicated to him, a location for the military to pick Douglas Wood up from that location," his Sydney spokesman, Keysar Trad, said last night.

"The release has gone through peacefully.

"We are grateful to the Federal Government for helping to make the mufti's mission successful.

"This is indeed a wonderful release."

The sheik thanked tribal leaders and said that when he spoke to Australia's ambassador in Baghdad, Howard Brown, they both cried.

By midday, Mr Wood was in a military hospital inside Camp Victory in Baghdad. Mr Warner said he was in "quite good shape" but mentally exhausted.

Early indications are that Mr Wood will travel to Australia as soon as possible to see brothers Malcolm and Vernon and their families, who have maintained a steadfast dignity throughout the ordeal.

The family mounted a smart and focused campaign to seek the engineer's release, including advertisements in Arab newspapers.

Their website published family photos and details of the medications Mr Wood needed daily for illnesses including heart disease, high blood pressure and rheumatoid arthritis.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Inside a Baghdad Hostage Rescue
How Iraqi troops freed Australian Douglas Wood
By SALLY B. DONNELLY/BAGHDAD

Late Wednesday morning in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood, 15 Iraqi soldiers on a cordon-and-search operation suddenly had a question for their commander, identified by the U.S. military only as Colonel Mohammed: Should they break down the second door of a house they had been ordered to search? According to U.S. military sources, Col. Mohammed, who as an officer in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army during the Gulf War in 1991 shot down a US F-15, barely hesitated: "Yes, of course break it down!" The colonel then returned to what he had been doing: passing out American-provided crayons, stuffed animals and backpacks to the local kids. As his troops rushed the second door, two men opened up with AK-47s from the other side, but Col. Mohammed's men broke through the doorway and wrestled the fighters to the floor.

Inside, they had another surprise: just a few steps away, hidden under a blanket — where he had been told to stay and act like a sick female — and dressed in a long Arab man's shirt, was Australian hostage Douglas Wood, who had been held by an Iraqi insurgent group since May 1. Wood, who is married and resides in California, was stunned by his rescue. He told a U.S. solider that reached him minutes later: "I haven’t smiled in 45 days." Col. Mohammed, who accepted several hugs from Wood, congratulated his troops and told them, "You gave Mr. Wood his life back." That was no exaggeration: Wood had seen three other hostages executed in front of him in the course of his captivity.

Although the capability of Iraqi forces to operate independently of their U.S. counterparts to secure the country has been the focus of intense debate, a U.S. Army adviser to Col. Mohammed’s unit, from the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Iraqi Army, says this one is ready to roll. "These troops are highly competent and this operation showed that,” said Capt. Randy Green, 41. “Even Mr. Wood kept telling me how professional the Iraqis were and how they treated his hostage takers with restraint." According to U.S. military officials, Iraqi security forces are taking a much more prominent role in similar operations across the country, although they admit that few of the 170,000 Iraqi security forces trained so far can match the capabilities of Col. Mohammed's men. For Doug Wood, they were up to the job today.


Ellie