U.S. Banker, 55, Abducted From Beirut Campus

An American banker working for the American University of Beirut was kidnaped Friday from the university’s guarded campus in West Beirut.

The victim was Joseph J. Cicippio, 55, and his abduction was the second involving a U.S. citizen in the Lebanese capital this week. Five Americans are now believed to be in captivity in Lebanon.

The latest kidnapings, after months of relative quiet, appeared to be a challenge to Syrian authority in the Muslim sector of Beirut. Syria sent troops to Beirut in July and has attempted to assure members of the foreign community that the period of militia anarchy is at an end.

A university spokesman said that Cicippio, of Valley Forge, Pa., was kidnaped Friday morning as he left the faculty apartment building on the oceanfront boulevard known as the Corniche. Cicippio, the university hospital’s deputy controller, was acting controller of the university as well.

The spokesman said four gunmen arrived at the university’s faculty gate at 7 a.m. and held an armed watchman at gunpoint. Cicippio was ambushed as he left the apartment building, pistol-whipped and then carried out through the gate and bundled into the trunk of a waiting car.

A Lebanese policeman who was supposed to have been on patrol at the time of the kidnaping arrived late for his shift. “I was only five minutes late,” he said, refusing to give his name to reporters. “I guess I missed the action.”

Bloodstains Found

A pair of eyeglasses belonging to Cicippio was found at the faculty building. There were bloodstains on the ground.

“Joe Cicippio was not the sort of guy to go quietly,” a colleague said.

Cicippio, who will be 56 today, joined the university staff in June, 1984, after a career in banking in Redding, Pa., Norristown and Cape May, N.J., and in London, where he specialized in Middle Eastern finance.

A convert to Islam, he is married to a Ilham Ghandour, 25, a Lebanese Muslim who works at the U.S. Embassy in Aukar, near East Beirut. He has seven children by two previous marriages.

Relatives in the United States told the Associated Press that Cicippio had worked in New Jersey for 25 years as a branch bank manager but left the United States about 10 years ago.

‘Hit Him on the Head’

Reporter Andy Hachadorian of the Times Herald of Norristown, N.J., spoke with Ilham Ghandour Cicippio by telephone and quoted her as saying, “We don’t know who did this. They just hit him on the head an took him.”

Her weeping mother, Malak Ghandour, earlier told reporters in Beirut, “Why should they take him? He is a Muslim.”

“This is an unhappy day for education in the Middle East,” a university spokesman said. “But we feel we can go ahead with the fall semester in October.”

The spokesman said it was not clear how many of the dozen Americans still at the university will stay on now. The university is between academic terms at present, and many of the Americans are away from Lebanon.

Two of the other four Americans in captivity are from the university--David P. Jacobsen, 55, of Huntington Beach, Calif., who is the administrator of the university hospital, and Thomas Sutherland, 55, the dean of agriculture.

‘Sobering Development’

A university official called the use of the campus by the gunmen a “sobering development” since many faculty members had regarded the campus as safer than the surrounding streets of West Beirut. University President Malcolm Kerr was slain on the campus in 1984, and since then, it has been guarded by Lebanese troops.

Cicippio’s abduction came three days after the kidnaping of another American educator, Frank Reed, director of the Lebanese International School. Reed, 53, of Malden, Mass., is also married to a Muslim and is a convert to Islam.

Responsibility for Reed’s abduction was claimed by a telephone caller claiming to represent the terrorist organization known as Islamic Jihad. The caller said Reed had been using his wife and Islam as a cover for spying.

But a letter delivered to Beirut newspapers Thursday said that Islamic Jihad, which means “Holy War,” was not involved in the kidnaping. The letter included a photograph of Jacobsen, the hospital administrator who is in captivity, as proof of its authenticity.

Slaying Claimed

In addition to Jacobsen and Sutherland, Islamic Jihad is thought to be holding Terry A. Anderson, 38, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, and three Frenchmen. Islamic Jihad has claimed that it killed another American hostage, U.S. diplomat William Buckley, but his body has never been found.

Despite Islamic Jihad’s denial of involvement, pro-Iranian Shia Muslim groups are known to oppose the deployment of Syrian troops in West Beirut. The abduction of foreigners in West Beirut under the eyes of Syrian intelligence men would be regarded as a blow to the prestige of Syrian President Hafez Assad.

The Syrians have hailed the presence of the American University of Beirut as a positive contribution to Lebanon, despite the differences between Damascus and Washington over Middle East policy and terrorism.