No ransom was paid and no political concessions given to free hostage Douglas Wood from 47 days of captivity in Iraq, Australian officials were quoted by dpa as saying on Thursday. The 63-year-old Australian-born engineer was found tied to a bed and covered in a blanket during a routine operation by Iraqi forces in a restive neighbourhood in Baghdad. "We paid no ransom and we made no change to our policies," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. "The Wood family, at some stage, said they would be prepared to make a contribution to an Iraqi charity if Douglas was released, but that didn't come to anything." Wood's family vowed to make the donation anyway, saying they bore no ill will over the abduction, dpa said. "The unhappy circumstances in which the family has recently been placed has brought the situation of the people of Iraq into sharp focus," Malcolm Wood told reporters in Canberra. "Iraqis are our brothers and our sisters and we empathise (with those) who have lost loved ones, lost jobs and lost hopes." --More 1332 Local Time 1032 GMT
