Lebanese Hunters Save Kidnaped Frenchman

Clansmen on a nighttime rabbit hunt in the Bekaa Valley found a kidnaped French schoolteacher instead and drove his captors off in a brief but fierce gun battle early Friday.

Hours after Michel Brian was rescued in the Syrian-controlled valley, Irish teacher Brian Keenan was reported missing and feared kidnaped in Muslim West Beirut. He would be the 50th foreigner abducted in Lebanon since January, 1984.

Brian, who was turned over to the French ambassador in Damascus, Syria, after his dramatic rescue, told reporters: “I have had incredible luck to be liberated only three days after my abduction. There was gunfire and my kidnapers panicked . . . put me in a ditch . . . and sped away. I didn’t know what was happening.”

Seized in Beirut

Gunmen seized Brian, who teaches French at the College Protestant Francais, on Tuesday night in West Beirut.

His four captors apparently were moving him when the three hunters from the Dandash family came across the parked car at about 2:30 a.m. Friday in scrubland near their village of Baalbek, 10 miles from the Syrian border.

Brian’s kidnapers fired on the clansmen, who cast aside their hunting guns and blazed away in return with AK-47 assault rifles, a standard issue weapon for men who venture out in the Bekaa. The abductors pushed their captive out of the car into a ditch and sped off.

The 42-year-old teacher was blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back. He said in an interview at the Dandash home soon afterward that he lay in the ditch for a few minutes, “then three men came up and took off the blindfold and released my hands.”

Didn’t Speak English

“They didn’t speak English or French,” he said, “but I understood they were there by accident while they were hunting. I went with them in their car to their place.

“They told me they were hunting rabbits there and I said: ‘You’ve got yourself a big rabbit, then.”’

Hassan Mustafa Dandash, the clan chief, notified the Syrian army and called in an elderly villager who speaks French so they could communicate with Brian, who was shaken but unhurt.

Describing his abduction Tuesday in West Beirut, Brian said, “A gunman with a thick black beard came up to me and said in English, ‘Don’t talk. Don’t scream.’

“He pushed me into the trunk of a Renault car. We drove for about 1 1/2 hours. Then . . . they put me in the trunk of another car . . . and we drove for about an hour. They put a blanket on the floor and covered me with another one.”

Accused of Spying

“They took me to a house and asked me if I was a military man,” he said. “Then they accused me of being an Israeli spy. I was blindfolded all the time and I didn’t see any faces. I don’t know who they are, whether they’re Shia Muslims or not.”

Brian said he was treated well.

A previously unknown group called the Siffine Islamic Organization, believed to be a Shia Muslim faction, claimed responsibility Thursday for kidnaping Brian. The Bekaa Valley is a Shia stronghold.

Brian was the second Western hostage to escape from kidnapers near Baalbek. Jeremy Levin, former Beirut bureau chief for Cable News Network escaped in February, 1985, after spending almost a year in captivity.

Eight other Frenchmen have been kidnaped by Shia terrorists in West Beirut in the last year. Brian said he did not see any of them during his brief captivity.

Belfast to Beirut

Radwan Mawlawi, spokesman for the American University of Beirut where the missing Irishman teaches English, said police were alerted when Keenan, 35, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, did not arrive for work Friday. He said the university had been in touch with militia leaders in Beirut “for information on his disappearance.”

Two British teachers from the American University--political science professor Leigh Douglas, 34, and Philip Padfield, 40, director of the international language center--disappeared in West Beirut on March 28. No group has claimed to have seized them, but police and British diplomats believe that they were abducted.