U.S. Peace Workers Reach Nicaragua Port; Kidnaping Incident Remains Unclear

Twenty-nine American peace activists who said they were kidnaped and held captive by rebels for a day in a remote area of Costa Rica south of the San Juan River arrived Friday in this town on Lake Nicaragua.

Questions about the reported kidnaping incident continued, with no immediate full clarification of contradictory statements made by members of the Washington-based Witness for Peace group and others about what happened to the group and who was involved.

The Americans arrived here in the 50-foot barge that they sailed up the San Juan River on a so-called “boat ride for peace” to protest Reagan Administration policies toward Nicaragua. The river forms the boundary between Nicaragua and Costa Rica along about half of its length, and the remote frontier region has been the site of battling between U.S.-supported rebels based in Costa Rica and Nicaragua’s Sandinista army.

Witness for Peace officials in Managua and Washington had said that anti-Sandinista rebels fired automatic weapons over the group’s boat Wednesday and forced the occupants to disembark on the Costa Rican side.

William Gasperini, a free-lancer who was one of 14 journalists that accompanied the “boat ride for peace,” said here Friday that the barge was stopped by a single warning shot fired by a group of gunmen early Wednesday morning.

Peace group spokesmen and Sandinista officials have accused the Costa Rica-based Democratic Revolutionary Alliance, a Nicaraguan rebel organization with U.S. backing, of kidnaping the activists, who wanted to hold a peace vigil at the site of a recent battle between alliance guerrillas and Nicaraguan soldiers.

The alliance, known here by its Spanish acronym ARDE, categorically denied the allegations. It said that other anti-Communist guerrillas operate in the area where the incident reportedly occurred and that, in addition, the region was recently retaken from the guerrillas by Sandinista troops.

Gasperini said Friday that a rebel commander leading a band of seven men and calling himself “Israel” had stopped the barge and ordered the group on a one-mile hike into Costa Rican territory.

“They repeatedly identified themselves as ARDE and said they were proud of the support they received from the United States,” Gasperini said.

Israel and another rebel, calling himself “William,” said that they were followers of Eden Pastora, ARDE’s military commander, but that they had stopped the boat on their own, not under orders from the ARDE high command, Gasperini said.

“They began saying they were an independent group of anti-Communist Nicaraguans” shortly before releasing the group after 29 hours, he said.

Gasperini said all of the Americans in the group were “tired but in good health.”

During the episode, the Americans were treated “with respect and graciousness” by the seven rebels, Gasperini said.

Upon arrival of the peace group here, one its members, Anita von Wellsheim, of Albany, N.Y., said she was glad the trip was over.

“I felt terrified when the shot rang out and they stopped the boat. But then I saw they were human and we got along,” Wellsheim said.

Group members said that they were aware that the river flowed through an area that is sometimes the scene of fighting between rebels and the Sandinista army but added that they were convinced that efforts such as the “boat ride for peace” must continue.

“It is great to be alive,” said Shubert Frye, a retired minister from Port Jarvis, N.Y., who at 80 is the oldest member of the group. “I’ve got a lot of living yet to do and most of that will be spent trying to get our government to stop aiding” the rebels.

Witness for Peace, a Christian interfaith group, has sent about 1,500 people to hold peace vigils in Nicaragua during the last two years, its officials in Managua said.