It began with the sheikh with his son's daughter and interpreter Kayser Trad present telephoning Baghdad to inquire about the fate of the two Iraqis taken hostage with Douglas Wood, and whose lives the sheik hoped he had saved through his negotiation with their captors. The sheik is speaking to the brother-in-law of Adel Najm, one of the two hostages.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I postponed, I said I wouldn't receive Douglas unless Adel and Fares returned safely to their families. They promised me so. They promised me, by God. That's what they told me. Adel and Fares were still alive and would be released after Douglas was.

This has become a controversial point in the whole saga. Since Sheikh Hilaly claims the raid by Iraqi forces to rescue Douglas Wood had risked the lives of the other two hostages. As we go to air, however, news reports have emerged about the timing of the deaths of the two Iraqis. It was only last night however that the sheik learned the men may be dead.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): They went to the hospital. They found a corpse in the fridge. It looked like Adel. But they couldn't tell for sure.

KEYSAR TRAD: They went to hospital, to the morgue, they saw a dead person.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): The corpse was lying... The hospital had taken the corpse off the street.

KEYSAR TRAD: A corpse that was picked up by the hospital from the street.

GEORGE NEGUS: Earlier today, I spoke again to the family of Adel Najm, they confirmed his death as well as that of the other hostage, Fares Shakir, Douglas Wood's driver. But yesterday evening, the sheik was still hoping the men might be alive. When we talked, I pressed him on his reaction to last week's raid, which he's described as 'stupid'.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): The raid breached the agreement that we had. He had been transferred to this safe place. I called the embassy from Cairo, I spoke to Mr Nick Warner and told him “Tomorrow, a sheikh will call you, he will arrange a time to bring him to Babylon Hotel, where you will collect him. They told me “The contract will take place tomorrow.” I told him “You will be contacted and a time will be made.
“He will be taken to Babylon Hotel, then it will up to you.” He said “I know it is my responsibility. I’ll take him to Germany, to America and maybe Australia.”

GEORGE NEGUS: So Nick Warner, the senior Australian involved in trying to get Douglas Wood released, told you that they would act on the advice that you gave them?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Yeah.

GEORGE NEGUS: The day before.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I spoke to him from Cairo the day before, witnessed by the Australian Ambassador in Cairo. And also by Amani, a consular official there, an Egyptian woman who was interpreting. We made the call from my house to Mr Nick Warner in Baghdad.

GEORGE NEGUS: So he told you they were definitely go and collect Douglas Wood from the Babylon Hotel.

SHEIK TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Yes, he said “When the sheikh calls I’ll take responsibility.”

GEORGE NEGUS: So what do you think went wrong? Why didn't they do that? Is it because this raid happened in the meantime? You don't think the Australians knew about that raid?

SHEIK TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I’m 100% sure they didn’t know. After he was released and Mr Howard had made a statement, I called Mr Nick, in the presence of the Australian ambassador and explained to him what had happened.

KEYSAR TRAD: You called after the raid?

SHEIK TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Yes, after it had been on the news.

GEORGE NEGUS: What did he say?

SHEIK TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): He said “I thank you for all your efforts, and I appreciate all the time you have spent with me, the end result, regardless of how it happened, is that Douglas is alive and free, without any bloodshed or the payment of money.

GEORGE NEGUS: Except that now there has been bloodshed. You think maybe one of the two Iraqi that was with Douglas Wood has died since Douglas Wood's rescue?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): At the time we were only thinking of Douglas.

GEORGE NEGUS: Fares was very close to Douglas Wood. Douglas Wood spent time at his home, ate with his family, knew him quite well.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): He was his close friend, his driver and associate.

GEORGE NEGUS: Does this mean the captor, the insurgents, the people who captured Douglas Wood and these two Iraqi gentlemen just can't be trusted.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): After the raid, contact stopped, the raid has had bad consequences.

GEORGE NEGUS: Do you think Douglas Wood was wise to describe his captors as, to use a dreadful Australian term, arseholes?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Douglas Wood doesn’t know his head from his feet, the poor guy should be excused, because he needs a new program…… he needs to be re-programmed to become a new person.
We are trying to build bridges between the Iraqi nation and its people and the Australian nation, Australian society. We have built many bridges and established good relations for the future. Such talk is irresponsible and very dangerous. It affects the relationship and any future work, involving Australian interests in Iraq.

GEORGE NEGUS: So you definitely think it would have been better had he chosen a different word to describe his captors?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Sometimes silence is better than talking.

GEORGE NEGUS: Have you had any contact with the Wood family because when Douglas Wood was interviewed at his press conference, he said he'd never heard of you? Have you had any contact with him since you've been back and he's been back? Has the Wood family or Douglas Wood telephoned or contacted you in any way?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): In fact when his brothers visited me, I respected them, I felt they were respectable. I saw myself as their brother and took on that responsibility, I thought Douglas was the same type of person.

GEORGE NEGUS: Would you like to meet him and explain to him you believe you have done to help him?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Of course, of course, I offered to stay with him in Baghdad, I didn’t get that chance, so maybe we can spend time together in Australia and learn from each other.

GEORGE NEGUS: Is it possible that Nick Warner didn't take any notice of you because you had said many, many - several times while you were in Iraq that he would be released, that you said his release was imminent? days away. We have a term crying wolf, do you think that maybe, maybe the Australians thought once more Sheik Hilaly's telling us that Douglas Wood will be free but why should we believe him?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I respect this man. I work with him two weeks. Every night I meet him in the Australian Embassy in Baghdad. This green blaze or green area, but a black area, not green, it's black. No light, no safety, security, everything dangerous. He knows my job step by step, word by word, action by action, he can write.

GEORGE NEGUS: You told him everything?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Everything. Only he knows the full story better than I do. I tend to forget, he knows more than me.

GEORGE NEGUS: Maybe it's the case that only when Mr Warner tells his full story will we know exactly what your involvement was?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): He knows a lot of things, I told him some of the things I did, he knows many of these things. I was clear in what I had told him. Tomorrow is the final day, you will return to your family. You have been away from your family for seven weeks.

GEORGE NEGUS: So why don't you think Nick Warner has said publicly to the Australian people what you've told him? Why doesn't he say that he believed you that he acted on your words, he trusted you, he thought your contacts were very good? Why hasn't he told the world? Why hasn't he told Australia?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): He worked with the Australian Government. You can't say anything out of the Government decision.

GEORGE NEGUS: So you understand why he hasn't?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Maybe he wait after the few days help Douglas have some relax and some rest.

GEORGE NEGUS: So you don’t hold the Australians responsible at all for what happened, the way Douglas Woods was rescued, let alone the death now of one of the Iraqis as we hear?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): No, no I don’t, what happened exactly, is that some Iraqi police officers or the National Guard, were conducting a search and stumbled on someone. Oh, who’s this? Douglas. And Rambo, the American forces thank you very much, took him, and that is what happened.

GEORGE NEGUS: But you don't really blame anyone? It was an unfortunate set of circumstances.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): No, up till now I have no information of betrayal, till now.

GEORGE NEGUS: Who was your agreement with? You talk a lot about having an agreement with the captors, presumably through intermediaries, who was your agreement with?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): Absolutely with the people in charge.

KEYSAR TRAD: With the people in charge, with the leaders of this group.

GEORGE NEGUS: Of the insurgents?

KEYSAR TRAD: Yes.

GEORGE NEGUS: And you trusted them?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I think they’re honest people. Those who dealt with me, I worked with them. Some were materialistic and wanted a ransom, demanding $25 million from the embassy.

GEORGE NEGUS: But can you really trust people like that?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): You have to treat people as they like to be treated.

GEORGE NEGUS: Some of your critics have said that you actually support the insurgency in Iraq, that you support the insurgents, the sort of people who captured Douglas Wood and that's why you were able to negotiate with them because you believe in their cause?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): People who say that have no understanding of how negotiations work. I’d never reach these people except this way. To reach any solution or agreement between the Australian or American governments, between the western forces and these people, I am the one to convince them and deal with them now I’ve had this trip.

GEORGE NEGUS: You believe you are the peacemaker.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I’m ready for that.

GEORGE NEGUS: Did you have to speak with a forked tongue when you were speaking with the insurgents.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): No, it’s the diplomatic way, that is what they call the safety way for our calling. One should talk to people in a way they understand, you talk to them so they understand. Every person has his method and I believe them and I respect those with a cause. I do not deceive them and I am still willing to cooperate with them, with anything that may benefit Iraq.

GEORGE NEGUS: Did you have to tell them you agreed with their insurgency? That you supported them?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I didn’t say that, I support the Iraqi people obtaining independence, but not the kidnapping of innocent people like Mr Douglas and the journalist.

GEORGE NEGUS: Could you ever say that you support the Australian troops who are there in Iraq with the American troops as part of the coalition? Do you support the Australian presence in Iraq?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): The Australian forces and all the forces there, are there because of an American decision. That's all. One decision from the White House. No decision from Canberra or any capital.

GEORGE NEGUS: Were you seriously in danger when you were in the red zone, not the green zone in Baghdad. When you were moving around those two weeks or more, three visits to Baghdad, did you feel your own life was under threat? Was it ever under threat?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I faced situations where I could have died and they’d bury me and nobody would know. I faced some very dangerous situations with these people.

GEORGE NEGUS: When did you believe you had successfully negotiated Douglas Wood's release? What did you do? What did you say to convince his captors that they should let him go when in fact they had voted to execute him?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I understand the mentality of those people and I know their background well. There are four or five different groups, who have different strategies, politics and different situations. They have five groups, and first I established which type of group they were and every day I issued a press release on Sharkeya, in the Iraqi media, and the television station of the Iraqi Islamic Party, they have their own TV station in Baghdad and they gave me a half-hour interview.

GEORGE NEGUS: You believed Douglas Wood was going to be executed and you successfully talked them out of killing him.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): 100%.

GEORGE NEGUS: You have said that you don't want gratitude for whatever role it was that you've played. What do you want?

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I’d really like to see a just approach by our Australian government to it’s foreign policy, especially in relation to the long-oppressed Iraqi people.

GEORGE NEGUS: As we were about to leave - in what Sheikh Hilaly acknowledged was a deliberate attempt to 'legitimise' his role in the Wood rescue - he called Iraq again. This time, he said we could speak directly with a man, he told us, was his go-between, his intermediary with Douglas Wood's captors. He claimed that the man on the line was an influential elder in Iraq's so-called Sunni Triangle - "a sheikh among sheikhs," is how he described him.

GEORGE NEGUS: Does he think that Douglas Wood would have been executed had it not been for the role the mufti played?

THE GO-BETWEEN, (Translation): Yes, it was only a matter of two hours between the Australian Mufti’s appeal and the plan to execute him.

GEORGE NEGUS: They would have killed Douglas Wood to prove their point?

THE GO-BETWEEN, (Translation): Yes they were prepared to decapitate him and send his head to Australia. So that Australians know that the Australian government, the Iraqis are not enemies of the Australian people, they are their friends. But they wanted to deliver a message to the Australian people to show them what the government is doing by sending troops to Iraq to help the occupier. That was the aim of the Iraqi resistance, whoever cooperates with the occupier is an occupier.

GEORGE NEGUS: What does he think of the raid that took place? Does he think that was a necessary thing?

THE GO-BETWEEN, (Translation): There was no raid to rescue the Australian, we were the ones who sent him, helped him and released him, it is all American media fabrication, he was only released to honour the Australian people, the Muslims of Australia and the Australian Mufti for his support of the Iraqi people.

SHEIKH TAJ EL-DIN AL-HILALY, (Translation): I’m worried, I’m so worried about Fares and Adel, according to the latest news that operation that raided Ghazaliya could result in the death of Fares and Adel. I’ve just contacted Adel’s wife and she said her husband was dead. So from you, yes please.

THE GO-BETWEEN, (Translation): They killed them because he was released and he was only kept there to protect him. Only to protect the Australian. God bless you, peace be upon you.

GEORGE NEGUS: Sheikh Hilaly - understandably emotional on hearing the news of the death of the two Iraqis taken hostage with Douglas Wood. A high-level local intermediary writing off the raid by Iraqi forces as a 'fabrication', and claiming the two innocent Iraqis had been killed after the Baghdad raid when earlier we confirmed with the family that they died before the raid. Whatever else, our evening with the sheikh reinforced how murky the truth can be in the murderous mess that is Iraq.
And, in case you were wondering, that interview, including the phone calls to Iraq, cost SBS two cab fares to south-west Sydney.