Handsome terrorist ‘protected’

Press, 8 May 1980, Page 1

Handsome terrorist ‘protected’

I NZPA London Several women- hostages in the Iranian Embassy ' siege refused to- identify i the only Arab terrorist cap* . tured alive when British commandos stormed the building because he was a good-looking boy, according to one of the captives. Sim Harris, a British Broadcasting Corporation soundman and the first hostage allowed 'to describe publicly the six-day ordeal, said he had had to tell the police who the man really was or else the terrorist would have easily been mistaken for a hostage.- It had been a problem that the Special Air Service commandos had feared: that they would mix up the hostages with the terrorists. “Unfortunately one of the terrorists was a very good-looking boy _ who would easily be. mistaken for a hostage,” said Mr Harris, in an emotional interview broadcast by 8.8. C. television on Tues* day evening. “They (the commandos) got him out from the main room where the hostages were and they got him on to the lawn - and they couldn’t decide what he was. He only spoke Farsi or Arabic..

“One or two of the older female hostages were saying things like, ‘He’s a nice boy and he had been quite pleasant to us’: they wouldn’t positively identify him as a terrorist. I shouted out, ‘There is no doubt: he is a terrorist.’ He then got carted away from the rest of us.” The “Guardian” newspaper said that the terrorist, who is now under armed guard. at a London police station, would be tried in Britain and that the Prime Minister (Mrs Thatcher) was determined to. resist any Iranian Government effort to have him extradited.

The police said that the gunman, would face ; murder . and kidnapping charges. In Teheran, ■Mr Hasan Habibi. a spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Council, was quoted by Teheran Radio as saying that Iran would seek extradi* tion of the gunman. But the British Home Secretary (Mr William Whitelaw) later assured the House of Commons that the terrorist would be “subject to the due processes of law in'this country.”. British proud of rescue.— Page 8.