Islamic Jihad Vows to Kill Hostages if U.S. Attempts to Rescue Them

The Shia Muslim extremist group Islamic Jihad said Thursday that it will kill its American hostages if the United States tries to rescue them by force.

A typewritten statement in Arabic, delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut, was accompanied by a photograph of captive David P. Jacobsen, 55, of Huntington Beach.

The group, whose name means Islamic Holy War, did not explain why it chose this time to issue a warning about a rescue attempt.

Its threat coincided with a statement by another Shia Muslim group claiming that it had kidnaped an “agent of the Iraqi secret service” in Cyprus and offering to exchange him in Beirut for two Iraqi Shias deported from France.

In addition to Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital, Americans missing in Lebanon are Terry A. Anderson, 38, of Lorain, Ohio, chief Middle East correspondent of the Associated Press; Thomas Sutherland, 55, of Fort Collins, Colo., acting dean of agriculture at the university, and William Buckley of Medford, Mass., a U.S. Embassy political officer. Islamic Jihad claimed last October that it had killed Buckley, then 57, but his body has not been found.

Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, 51, a Roman Catholic priest from Joliet, Ill., was released July 26 after nearly 19 months in captivity.

The statement delivered Thursday was similar in language to previous ones issued by Islamic Jihad.

“We warn everyone who contemplates any military or security foolhardiness to free the hostages, because his as well as their fate would be much worse than the U.S. Marines (killed) on the outskirts of Islamic Beirut,” it said.

A suicide driver exploded a truck bomb at U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983, killing 241 American servicemen. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for that bombing and another the same day that killed 58 French soldiers.

Islamic Jihad has demanded the release of 17 comrades held in Kuwait for bombing the U.S. and French embassies there on Dec. 12, 1983. Kuwait has refused.

Jacobsen’s 30-year-old son, Eric, said Thursday in Huntington Beach that he fears that Jihad’s latest threat is not being taken seriously by the Reagan Administration. “I don’t think the captors realize that all these threats accomplish is to cause the families (of the hostages) more pain and suffering. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on the government or American people.”