Terrorism

By Michael S. Serrill

For the small knot of foreigners still crazy or desperate enough to brave the mean streets of Beirut, it was one of the worst weeks in memory. In the short span of eight days, eight new hostages were swept up in a frightening new paroxysm of terrorist kidnapings. Almost any foreigner was fair game, and the reign of terror struck almost anywhere in the tortured city, from the backseat of a taxicab to a sun-drenched sidewalk, from a quiet hotel room to a seat of higher learning.

^ The first victim was Rudolf Cordes, a West German businessman, who was pulled out of his cab in the West Beirut slum of Ouzai by two carloads of pistol-wielding terrorists. Three days later, Alfred Schmidt, an engineer for Siemens, the giant West German electronics firm, was rousted from bed in his hotel room at gunpoint. He was led away wearing only his pajamas and a leather jacket. On Friday, two more men were kidnaped in downtown West Beirut. Police later said they were Lebanese Armenians, not West Germans as claimed earlier by the kidnapers. Finally, on Saturday night, a well-organized band of machine-gun-toting thugs pulled off the week's most daring escapade. Disguised as Lebanese police, they drove unchallenged onto the campus of Beirut University College, gathered four professors, three of them Americans and the other an Indian-born man carrying a U.S. passport, and drove off, holding guns to the heads of their stunned prey.

The abductions brought to eight the number of Americans known to be held in Lebanon. Ironically, the episode that sparked the new wave of terror appeared to be the Jan. 13 arrest in Frankfurt, West Germany, of a Lebanese suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and the subsequent murder of a U.S. Navy diver. The kidnapings also coincided with the latest mission to Beirut by Anglican Emissary Terry Waite, his first since it was revealed last November that the U.S. had sold weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages held by pro- Iranian groups in Lebanon.

Waite vanished on Tuesday into secret enclaves controlled by the Shi'ite terrorist group known as Islamic Jihad, or Holy War. Islamic Jihad is thought to be holding U.S. Hostages Thomas Sutherland, acting dean of agriculture at American University, and Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press. But when Waite, the towering (6 ft. 7 in.) envoy of Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, failed to reemerge by early this week after five days of talks, fears grew that he might have become a kidnap victim himself.

Saturday's mass abduction began to unfold when three men wearing olive- drab uniforms and the trademark red berets of the Lebanese special police entered the college campus at about 7 p.m. in what appeared to be a police patrol jeep. They had campus security guards round up a dozen of the school's teaching staff, saying they wanted to discuss new security arrangements. When the group had assembled, police said later, the terrorists picked out the four professors, "drew their guns and took them all away."

"I thought they were regular policemen," reported a Lebanese campus guard. "They wore the red berets of the Squad 16 riot police, which made me unsuspicious. I was astonished to see them about ten minutes later racing out in a jeep with the professors. They were pointing guns to the professors' heads. One of them yelled at me, 'If you talk we shall finish you!' "

Police and university officials identified the Americans as Alann Steen, a journalism professor; Jesse Turner, a computer-science instructor; and Robert Polhill, assistant professor of business. The fourth victim was Mithileshwar Singh, chairman of the business department.

In Washington, the National Security Council informed Ronald Reagan of the kidnapings at the President's Camp David retreat. "The President is concerned," said a White House spokesman. "We hold those individuals who took the hostages responsible for the safety of the hostages, and call for their immediate release." State Department officials, meanwhile, re- emphasized that all of Lebanon is dangerous for U.S. citizens. Washington, they said, cannot guarantee the safety of those few Americans who continue to live there.

Even before last week's grim harvest of hostages, the roster of those already held captive in Lebanon consisted of five Americans, five Frenchmen, two Britons, an Italian, an Irishman, a South Korean and a Saudi Arabian. Last week Vice President George Bush confirmed that another American hostage, CIA Beirut Station Chief William Buckley, was killed last year by his captors. Anderson and Sutherland were abducted in the spring of 1985 by Shi'ite radicals. Their captors' principal demand: the release of 17 presumed Shi'ites who are serving prison sentences for, among other things, terrorist attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait. Three other Americans, Joseph Cicippio, Frank Reed and Edward Tracy, are said to be held by groups called the Revolutionary Justice Organization and Arab Revolutionary Cells-Omar Moukhtar Forces.

The outrages in Beirut followed what seemed a rare break in the long and painful campaign against international terrorism. That was the chance arrest in West Germany of Mohammed Ali Hamadei, 22, one of four alleged ringleaders in the TWA hijacking and suspects in the killing of Navy Diver Robert Stethem. Hamadei is thought to be one of the two gunmen who were actually aboard TWA Flight 847 when it was commandeered and who savagely beat and then shot the American sailor. Hamadei was detained at Frankfurt's international airport after officials discovered he was carrying a false passport and bottles packed with liquid explosives.

West German elation at Hamadei's arrest quickly dissolved when Cordes, then Schmidt, was kidnaped. It was immediately assumed that the abductors planned to use the West German hostages as bargaining chips for Hamadei's release. The hostage takings were a rude awakening for West Germans. For years Bonn has cultivated good relations throughout the Muslim world. Partly as a result, the three-year spree of kidnapings in Lebanon, until now aimed mostly at the U.S. and France, has had little impact on Germans living in Beirut, who continued to operate more or less normally.

The West Germans' captors lost no time making their demands known. Within 24 hours of Cordes' disappearance, officials in Bonn received word that his kidnapers were indeed demanding a hostage-for-prisoner swap. Suspicion immediately centered on the radical Shi'ite organization Hizballah (Party of God), to which Hamadei is thought to be linked. A West German radio station, quoting an unnamed Christian source in Beirut, said the abductions were planned by Hamadei's brother Abdul, who is thought to be a Hizballah security officer.

Bonn was also under pressure from the Reagan Administration to extradite Hamadei to the U.S., where he faces a dozen separate charges related to the 1985 hijacking. Early in the week, the Justice Department reluctantly agreed to promise that it would forgo the death penalty for Hamadei, bowing to a provision in the U.S.-West German extradition treaty that prevents Bonn from turning over prisoners who face capital punishment. After first indicating that extradition would be arranged quickly, Bonn officials grew concerned that any such course would doom one or both of the new hostages. Turning Hamadei over to the U.S., they suggested, would take at least several weeks and might not be possible at all. Said one government official: "Nothing will happen suddenly."

For Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the hostage crisis could hardly have come at a worse time. In the closing days of a re-election drive that he was expected to win handily, Kohl was forced to spend much of his time directing the behind- the-scenes effort to free the hostages. Bonn's strategy: to negotiate the release of the German hostages with the help of Middle East governments linked to Hizballah, including Iran and Syria. The Chancellor carefully consulted leaders of the opposition Social Democratic Party, the major challenger to his center-right coalition. SDP Candidate Johannes Rau declared that the hostage crisis would not become a last-minute election issue.

Even as the crisis escalated, Anglican Emissary Waite decided to prolong his latest mission to the Lebanese capital. Just before his scheduled departure from Beirut early in the week, Waite announced that he had re- established contact with the Islamic Jihad and promptly drove off into West Beirut with his usual bodyguard of Druze militiamen. As time passed and Waite did not reappear, both Anglican officials in England and Waite's Druze protectors repeatedly assured the press that he was in no danger. Said a Druze spokesman late Friday: "He is fine, and he is still negotiating with the hostage holders."

The mission was Waite's fifth attempt to free hostages held in Lebanon. When the U.S.-Iran arms-for-hostages deals surfaced, there was immediate speculation that the secret American weapons shipments to Iran -- and not Waite's negotiating skills -- might have been responsible for the release of three U.S. hostages; originally the Anglican official had been credited with securing their freedom. Last week Waite insisted that despite Iranscam, "my credibility has not been affected as a negotiator." Perhaps not. But as the list of hostages continued to lengthen, even in the face of delicate negotiations and secret deals, more than a few government leaders had to be wondering exactly what could be done to end the terror.

With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Cairo and William McWhirter/Bonn