A NORTH-East man held hostage in Bangladesh could have been freed if a fellow hostage had not hesitated in reporting their plight, it has emerged.

Minutes after Newcastle's Tim Selby and two Danes were taken hostage by Bangladeshi gunmen last Friday, a fellow hostage had the chance to raise the alarm.

However, according to local officials, Briton David Weston failed to do this.

He had been sent back, with a Bangladeshi driver, with a ransom demand, but instead of reporting the kidnap, he spent 30 to 40 minutes trying to convert the ransom amount into US dollars.

Mobaudul Islam, commissioner for the Chittagong region where they were seized, said: "An army patrol went past. They could have stopped it and said, 'okay, gentlemen, please help', but they didn't."

Instead, Mr Weston set off to Rangamati, a hill station two hours' drive away, where he and his colleagues, working for a Danish road-building company, were based.

He resumed his calculations in the lobby of their hotel. It was only when he realised that the ransom came to $1.8m - not $400,000 as he had earlier thought - that he informed the police.

Mr Islam said: "We are not trying to defame anyone, but, if we had known sooner, we might have been able to rescue the hostages in the first hour-and-a-half."

The kidnappers met officials on Wednesday to negotiate a deal to free the hostages, but the government would not pay the £1.1m ransom demanded by the abductors.

Mr Selby, 28, whose family live in Oldham, Greater Manchester, is being held within "three to five kilometres" of where they were seized.