Kidnappers silent as deadline passes

Press, 3 October 1985, Page 10

Kidnappers silent as deadline passes

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Uncertainty surrounded the fate of four Russian hostages yesterday after Muslim kidnappers issued photographs of them in captivity ana threatened to execute one.

A previously unknown group said that it would kill a hostage at 7 a.m. yesterday unless Moscow intervened to stop forces loyal to its ally, Syria, fighting rival Muslims in Tripoli, north Lebanon. No word came from the group after the deadline passed.

A source close to the Soviet Embassy, who earlier said the hostages were alive in Beirut and might be freed in two or three days, said he was still optimistic. “I hope all will go well and normally,” he said.

As pro-Syrian militias hunted for the missing men, dragged from cars in two incidents on Monday, the Soviet charge d’affaires, Mr Yuri Souslov, met the Lebanese President, Mr Amin Gemayel, to deliver a message from the Kremlin

about the kidnappings, official sources said.

In Moscow, the official Tass news agency described the kidnappers as ultra Right-wing bandits and said, “competent Soviet agencies” were taking all necessary steps to save the Soviet hostages. The Muslim militia chief, Mr Nabih Berri, had returned to Beirut from talks in Syria to watch the process of the search for the men, the first Russians seized — Beirut militia sources said. A statement with colour photographs of the hostages was given to international news agencies by the Islamic Liberation Organisation. It said:

“We will start carrying out the death sentence on the first hostage at 9.00 p.m. (local time) sharp unless the atheistic campaigns against Islamic Tripoli stop.” The statement was the last in a rash of conflicting claims made about the kidnapping to news agencies.

In common with all of them it demanded an end to

a militia war between proSyrian forces and proIranian Sunni Muslim fundamentalists in Tripoli. Anonymous callers told a foreign news agency the Islamic Jihad (Holy War) group held the four — the consular secretary, Arkady Katkov, a commercial official, Valery Mirikov, the embassy doctor, Nikolai Svirsky, and embassy attache, Oleg Spirine — and would start killing them in the afternoon.

Islamic Jihad says it holds six Americans and four Frenchmen among a total of 14 other foreigners missing after being kidnapped in west Beirut. The Soviet source said Moscow was in contact over the kidnaps with Syria, a close ally. But, there was no sign of the Syrian-backed assault on Tripoli slackening. Two weeks of fighting has trapped 200,000 civilians without food or electricity in the city and killed almost 300 people. More than 1000 civilians have been wounded.