Murder of 2 Soviets Told and Denied : Sources Deny Muslims Killed Soviet Captives

A telephone caller said today that two of four kidnaped Soviet Embassy employees had been killed, but intelligence sources said that they were alive and that the purported abductors produced photographs of them.

The instant photos, in color, showed all four Soviets with guns at their heads. An accompanying message said they would be killed unless a Syrian-backed offensive against fundamentalist Muslims in the northern port of Tripoli was called off.

There was no indication in the pictures of the day or time the photos were taken.

The photos were delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut with the statement, which said: “We will start carrying out the death sentence on the first hostage at 9 p.m. (11 a.m. PDT) sharp unless the atheistic campaign against Islamic Tripoli stops.”

But as the deadline passed, there was no indication whether any action had been taken.

Muslim Militia Cornered

Leftist militias backed by Syria, the Soviet Union’s main ally in the Middle East, have cornered fighters of the fundamentalist militia Islamic Unification in Tripoli, the port city 50 miles north of Beirut.

Two of the men in the pictures were identifiable as the kidnap victims from pictures in their residence permits, photocopies of which were circulated by the kidnapers earlier in the day. Lebanese authorities verified that the permits were authentic.

The instant photos and statement purportedly were from the Islamic Liberation Organization, Khaled Ben al Walid forces, the Beirut Sector, a Sunni Muslim group linked to the Islamic Unification movement.

The telephone caller, claiming to speak for the fundamentalist organization Islamic Holy War, said earlier in the day that two of the Soviets had been killed, but Lebanese intelligence sources said they were alive and had been held in West Beirut since they were seized there Monday in two separate abductions.

Whereabouts Known

The intelligence sources said all the Soviets were alive and that intelligence knew where they were.

They said two were being held by the Hezbollah, or Party of God, and the others by Islamic Holy War, or Islamic Jihad. Both are fundamentalist Shia Muslim groups.

The anonymous caller said the two Soviets killed were commercial attache Oleg Spirin and physician Nikolai Versky, the embassy doctor.

The other two Soviets abducted were the cultural attache, Arkady Katakov, and Valery Kornev, the embassy second secretary.