Couple Held by Nicaragua Free; Expected in Panama

A former Orange County couple held by the Nicaraguan government are expected to arrive in their sailboat today in Panama, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.

A State Department official said that most doubts were removed Wednesday that Nicaragua actually had freed Leo and Dolores LaJeunesse after three weeks of detention in that country. The couple’s sailboat had been seized Aug. 7 in the Caribbean Sea, off the east coast of Nicaragua.

A Nicaraguan private citizen on Wednesday went to the U.S. Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua, and confirmed that he saw the LaJeunesses sailing to freedom last Saturday, said Norma Harms, of the State Department’s Nicaragua desk in Washington.

‘Heading for Panama’

“He said that Mr. and Mrs. LaJeunesse left under sail at 2:30 p.m. Sunday and said they were heading directly for Colon, Panama----that they didn’t intend to stop at Costa Rica,” Harms said.

Earlier, the State Department had alerted Costa Rica, which borders Nicaragua to the south, that the LaJeunesses might be arriving there this week. When they hadn’t arrived in Costa Rica by Tuesday, the couple’s friends and relatives in Southern California became concerned, and the State Department on Tuesday reiterated its doubts that the LaJeunesses had actually been set free.

Despite the good news Wednesday, Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) urged the State Department to continue pressing Nicaragua until the LaJeunesses actually appear.

William Schreiber, district officer for Badham, said that the congressman “believes Nicaragua has given us no reason to trust them” in its prior statements about the LaJeunesses.

Nicaragua ‘Lying’

Harms also said that Nicaraguan government officials had “been lying” in some of its previous statements about the couple. She said that Nicaragua still is insisting that it didn’t forcibly detain the couple, even though the private citizen told the U.S. Embassy he saw the LaJeunesses held under armed guard at a hotel in the Nicaraguan port city of Bluefields.

Nicaragua denied U.S. Embassy officials in Managua permission to go to Bluefields to see the LaJeunesses, the State Department said, but the couple was allowed some phone conversations with embassy staff. Harms said that the couple told the U.S. Embassy that they were being held under guard and accused of gun-running because two pistols and a rifle were found on their 65-foot sailboat. A daughter of the couple told U.S. officials the weapons were for shark protection.

Harms said that the Nicaraguan private citizen told the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday that Nicaraguan officials accused the LaJeunesses of spying. She said that the Nicaraguan also confirmed that the couple had been forced to pay $100 a day to Nicaragua for their “room and board” while they were being held in a hotel under house arrest.

Leo LaJeunesse, 53, was an associate dean at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa until resigning in 1982 to take an extensive sailboat cruise with his wife. The couple were en route to Orange County, via the Panama Canal, when they were intercepted by the Nicaraguan Coast Guard. Orange Coast College officials have said that Leo LaJeunesse was planning on relocating in Orange County and had applied for re-employment with the college. The couple formerly lived in Costa Mesa.