Lebanon Christian Teacher Freed by Muslim Captors

A Lebanese Christian professor was freed after five months in the hands of Muslim kidnapers and got a joyous welcome Wednesday from his students of both religions.

Nabil Matar, 36, associate professor of cultural studies at the American University of Beirut, was abducted May 7 by extremists seeking freedom for Muslims held by Christian militiamen.

Hours before Matar was freed Tuesday night, the pro-Iranian Revolutionary Justice Movement said it had kidnaped Edward A. Tracy, a 55-year-old American who lived in Muslim West Beirut.

University spokesman Radwan Mawlawi announced on Wednesday that Matar’s captors had let him go but did not explain why.

University’s Gratitude

“The AUB administration expresses gratitude to all government authorities and to political and religious leaderships and organizations whose incessant efforts led to the release of Prof. Matar,” the university said in a statement.

Students and colleagues mobbed the professor Wednesday when he strolled onto the seaside campus in West Beirut.

“I’m OK. I’m fine,” he said with a smile, but he refused to talk about his experience.

In years past, the university was a mixture of Muslims and Christians, but after 11 years of factional fighting and many kidnapings in West Beirut, most Christians are afraid to cross into the largely Muslim western sector, and the student body and faculty are now predominantly Muslim.

Muslim gunmen have abducted a score of faculty members, including Americans, over the last two years in an apparent attempt to drive Christians and foreigners out of the city.

Matar was seized in May as he walked the short distance to the campus from his home in the Muslim residential district of Ras Beirut.

In a statement 11 days later, a group calling itself the Independent Movement for Freeing Civil War Kidnap Victims claimed responsibility.

Fate of 2,200 Muslims

It said the kidnaping was part of an effort to pressure the government of President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Catholic, into determining the fate of about 2,200 Muslims believed held by Christian militias.

The group also claimed responsibility for killing several Armenian Christians in West Beirut last May.

A Shia Muslim group calling itself the Revolutionary Justice Organization claimed responsibility Tuesday for kidnaping Tracy and accused him of being a spy for the United States and Israel. U.S. officials denied the allegation, and Israel did not comment officially, in keeping with its policy about espionage matters.

Tracy had lived in Beirut for several years. The Middle East Reporter, a daily digest of Arab affairs published in Beirut, said he was a convert to Islam.

Selling Bible, Koran

He was described as an illustrator and a salesman of both the Bible and the Koran, the holy book of Islam.

Most of Tracy’s relatives live in Vermont, where he was reared in an Irish Catholic family. His West German ex-wife, Ingeberg Tracy, lives in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, with their three children, Lawrence, 24, Margaret Ann, 23, and Monica, 15.

In an interview from the Canary Islands with the Burlington, Vt., Free Press, Ingeberg Tracy said she and others in her village had received letters from her ex-husband that led them to suspect he was mentally unstable.

In one, he claimed to “be the father of 5,000 motorcycles.” She said he sent another letter to one of her neighbors saying that one of their daughters had married an Arab sheik and that he had seen their younger daughter in a movie.

“The letters were so ridiculous, so crazy that . . . they didn’t make sense at all,” she said.