You remember Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali. “Iraq: Australian Cleric Sees Hostage Footage,” from AKI, :
Baghdad – Australia’s leading Muslim cleric, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who is trying to secure the release of an Australian engineer in Iraq, is reported to have seen recent film footage of the hostage, Douglas Wood. Sheik al-Halili told the Associated Press agency in Baghdad that he had not actually met Wood, as had been erroneously reported in the Australian press. “I have seen a recent CD video lasting 12 to 15 minutes where Wood is alive and good and in honest hands,” al-Hilali told the agency, saying Wood apparently refers to ‘recent events’ that he had read in English-language newspapers that indicated he was still alive.
Honest hands?? Unsurprising, coming from Al-Hilali. Just before the September 11 attacks, he was filmed in his Sydney mosque endorsing suicide bombers. Then he went to Lebanon and signed a statement by clerics endorsing suicide attacks in Israel. He famously called 9/11 “God’s work.”