‘Violence Breeds More Violence,’ He Says : Son of Slain Hostage Assails Reagan

For more than a year, a North Hollywood man’s only contact with his father, a 65-year-old U. N. official, had been a videotape showing him being held hostage in Lebanon. On Thursday, David Collett received news that he had been dreading for months: His father was dead.

A body identified as that of Alec Collett, who was kidnaped March 25, 1985, by gunmen while he was on a three-month assignment for the U. N. Relief and Works Agency, was found early Thursday with the bodies of two other men along a mountainous road near Beirut.

A note found nearby signed by a Muslim extremist organization said the three men, all British citizens, had been killed in retaliation for the British-endorsed U. S. attacks on Libya earlier this week, according to a spokesman for the Irish Embassy in Beirut who identified the bodies.

The men had been shot at close range.

During a news conference at his apartment Thursday afternoon, Collett’s son, 27, lashed out at President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, calling them “directly responsible for my father’s murder.”

Thatcher had given permission for U. S. jets to take off from British military bases.

Collett said “not enough was done” in the way of negotiations to try to free his father. He called the attack on Libya a “Rambo tactic” that is “promoting further terrorism, such as my father’s killing.”

“I would like to ask President Reagan that if his wife, Nancy, were held in Beirut, whether he would have taken the same chances,” Collett said. “You cannot be stubborn when innocent people’s lives are at stake.”

Alec Collett was working for the U. N. project assisting Palestinian refugees when he was kidnaped as he rode in a car near Khalde, just outside Beirut.

After a preliminary investigation, U. N. officials said the kidnapers were members of a group calling itself the Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims. U. N. officials had pleaded with the group to return Collett but had never received a reply.

About a month later, the kidnaped man’s wife, Elaine, received a videotape from Switzerland showing her husband being interviewed by a captor. On the tape, though Collett said he was treated well and fed regularly, he appeared gaunt and tired and was missing at least one tooth, David Collett said. No demands were made on the tape for his release.

David Collett, a videocassette salesman who moved to Los Angeles in 1983, said he was notified about 7:15 a.m. of his father’s death when he was awakened by a phone call from Eric Jacobsen, son of David P. Jacobsen, the kidnaped administrator of American University Hospital in Beirut, who is still being held hostage.

David Collett spoke bitterly of military attempts to retaliate for terrorism, saying, “Violence breeds more violence.

“I find it ironic that my father was executed by the same people he went there to help,” he said. “Now they’re finished with my father, and they have achieved nothing. Nobody has achieved anything.”