U.S. Hostages Reported Slain; No Bodies Found

An anonymous telephone caller in Beirut claimed Thursday that all of the remaining Americans held hostage in the city have been executed, but Reagan Administration officials said the United States has received no evidence to substantiate the report.

Officials refused to say anything of substance about the government’s knowledge of the kidnap victims or to spell out what efforts are being made to free them. The officials said indirect contacts are still active, but they refused to describe them as negotiations.

The report that the American hostages have been killed came to the Beirut office of Agence France-Presse.

Eric Jacobsen, son of hostage David P. Jacobsen, 54, of Huntington Beach, said he received a telephone call Wednesday night from the State Department informing the family of the reports. It was, the younger Jacobsen told the Associated Press, “the one call all the families have dreaded getting.” The elder Jacobsen was director of the American University Hospital of Beirut, until he was kidnaped last May.

“I guess we’re somewhat relieved that it hasn’t been confirmed up to this point,” said Jacobsen, 29. “We try to have a hopeful attitude that it’s just a tactic or ploy to put more pressure on the U.S. government to act quickly.”

Shortly before the telephone report that the Americans had been killed, a caller identifying himself as a member of the Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) called the press agency to say that the five Americans would be killed by a firing squad because indirect negotiations with the United States have reached a “dead end.” Then came the second call saying that the hostages had been killed.

Islamic Jihad claimed on Oct. 4 to have killed the sixth and last known American hostage, William Buckley, 57, political officer at the Beirut Embassy, in retaliation for the Oct. 1 Israeli air raid on the Tunis headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization that killed 72 people. A photograph purporting to be the corpse of Buckley was published in a Beirut newspaper, but American officials refused to accept it as credible evidence that Buckley had been slain.

The caller said that Buckley’s body along with those of the other five victims would be found in the ruins of a Coca-Cola factory that was bombed during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. However, a police search produced nothing.

Nevertheless the calls produced sharp concern at the White House and the State Department.

“We hold the captors fully responsible for the safety of all the hostages,” said State Department spokesman Charles Redman, “and we call upon them to release the Americans and other hostages in Lebanon forthwith.”

Asked about the caller’s assertion that indirect negotiations had reached a dead end, Redman said: “We have always . . . been ready to talk about the safety of the hostages. We continue to make all possible efforts on behalf of the hostages. Obviously the efforts are ongoing.”

Last month, terrorists murdered a kidnaped employee of the Soviet Embassy a few days before Buckley, the only U.S. government employee among the six Americans held captive, was said to have been killed.

The assertion that Buckley had been killed came after a seventh American, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, was freed after 16 months of captivity. He was told to deliver the message that the remaining Americans would be executed unless there was movement toward the release of 17 prisoners held in Kuwait for bombings of the U.S. and French embassies there in December, 1983.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Weir said he took the Beirut calls “very seriously.”

Other than Buckley and Jacobsen, the remaining American hostages after the release of Weir and the earlier escape of Jeremy Levin, Beirut office manager for Cable News Network, are Terry A. Anderson, 38, Middle East bureau chief of the Associated Press, kidnaped last March; Father Lawrence Jenco, 50, a Roman Catholic priest kidnaped last January; Peter Kilburn, 60, librarian at the American University, kidnaped in November, 1984; and Thomas Sutherland, 54, dean of the American University’s school of agriculture, kidnaped last June.