An Australian freed last week after being held hostage by Iraqi insurgents for 47 days apologized yesterday to US President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for mouthing the words of his captors and calling on coalition troops to quit Iraq.
Douglas Wood, speaking to reporters after touching down in Melbourne, said his blast at the Iraq war contained in a video released during his confinement was made under duress.
"I actually believe that I am proof positive that the current policy of training the Iraqi army ... works because it was Iraqis that got me out," the 63-year-old engineer said. He said he would consider returning to Iraq to continue work as an independent contractor.
Wood, an expatriate for 40 years, lives in Alamo, California, with his US wife, Yvonne Given. He was freed last Wednesday. Iraqi troops on a routine search for weapons found him underneath a grubby blanket in a Baghdad house.
Wood, who was accompanied by Given and brothers Vernon and Malcolm, said certain aspects of his ordeal were still too painful to talk about. He called his captors "arseholes" and said his treatment at their hands had been "a bit intimidating."
He was kicked in the head, given a black eye and had his head shaved in apparent preparation for execution. He was bound and blindfolded most of the time and fed on bread and water. He recalls being moved from one house to another 10 days into his ordeal.
The jovial and still rotund engineer, who had worked in Iraq for a year before being seized, said the identity of his abductors was still a mystery.
"I didn't know whether it was al-Qaeda or who it was," he said. "Obviously, my head is intact, so it wasn't al-Qaeda."
Wood, whose family had offered a "large charitable donation" if his life were spared, was clearly happy to be among family and friends in his hometown. He entered the Melbourne airport press conference singing Waltzing Matilda, the song that serves as the country's alternative national anthem.
"I love my family, and I knew that they'd be doing as much as they could to get me out," he said.
Wood has sold his story to an Australian television station for an undisclosed sum. Filming began even before he left the Middle East.
Given said she never lost faith her globetrotting husband would be rescued.
"I'm so excited and so happy and very, very grateful to the Australian government," she said after flying in with him from their reunion in Dubai.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the