Freedom for Douglas Wood?

From the Daily Telegraph:

DOUGLAS Wood is alive and will be freed "at any time" according to French negotiators working alongside the Australian hostage team in Baghdad.

..."We believe he's alive and will soon be free," a French source outlined to The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

The breakthrough comes as Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday he had no official confirmation Mr Wood, 63, was alive or would be released.

The armed militants holding the Australian engineer are also holding French journalist Florence Aubenas, who was kidnapped in January.

A high-powered Australian government hostage negotiating team turned to Paris for help after it became clear that the Wood case was following a similar pattern to an earlier French hostage drama.

...Two French journalists were freed late last year after France's top mufti negotiated directly with the Sunni sheik who controls the group holding Mr Wood, the Shura Council of the Mujahideen of Iraq.

A substantial "charitable donation" from the Wood family has also been made to help secure the release after the hostage team was told by the French that a similar donation clinched the deal to free the two journalists.

The French mufti also left Baghdad yesterday after finalising plans for the release of Ms Aubenas who is held by a group closely associated with Mr Wood's captors.

It is understood the French charity Medicins Sans Frontiere has played a central role in the negotiations.

...Authorities now expect the captors, who are associated with a powerful Iraqi Sunni sheik, to release both hostages in the near future.

"They are not held by an al-Qaeda group and no ransom has been demanded so they should be okay," a source with the French revealed to The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Wood's Canberra-based family was last night nervously waiting for any news and knew nothing about the latest reports.

Mr Wood has been held for almost three weeks after being kidnapped in Baghdad where he was operating a small engineering company.
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I don't understand the negotiations that would prompt these non-al-Qaeda groups, the Shura Council of the Mujahideen of Iraq and one associated with it, to release Mr. Wood and French hostage Ms.Aubenas.

Hopefully, their release is, in fact, imminent.