Impassioned Plea to ‘Haj’ : Jacobsen Asks Captors to Release 2 Hostages

Former hostage David P. Jacobsen, in his first news conference since returning from 17 months of captivity in Lebanon, made an impassioned personal plea Thursday to one of his Shia Muslim captors to free two remaining American hostages.

Addressing his plea to “Haj,” Jacobsen asked that Terry Anderson, Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, and Thomas Sutherland, acting dean of the agriculture school of American University in Beirut, be given the same opportunity as he to be “home with their families.”

“I trust, Haj, that you will release Terry Anderson and Tom Sutherland and assist in the release of those held hostage by others,” he said. “In my conversations with you about democracy, peace, education and the history of your people, my feelings have not changed.

“I pray that the poor people you represent will someday enjoy the benefits that every human being deserves.”

Speaking to scores of reporters at a hotel ballroom in the city of Orange, Jacobsen said his forced captivity had left a profound impression on him.

To Shun Zoos

“I will never go to a zoo again because I would let all the animals free,” he said.

Jacobsen said he will travel to London with two other former hostages in an attempt to help with negotiations for the release of the remaining five Americans being held in Lebanon.

The Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian minister who was released Sept. 14, 1985, and Father Lawrence M. Jenco, a Roman Catholic priest who was freed July 26, will join him in a meeting with the special envoy of the Anglican Church who helped to secure their safe release, he said. At the news conference, Jacobsen paid tribute to that envoy, Terry Waite, who for a year has been trying to negotiate the release of hostages.

“Terry Waite is a free man and not an agent of any government or special interests,” Jacobsen said. “He has personally risked his life for all of us.”

Jacobsen, 55, who returned to his home in Huntington Beach last Sunday after being freed Nov. 2, refused to talk about the negotiations that led to his release. He did say, however, that he knew nothing about arms deals between the Reagan Administration and the government of Iran.

“I do not know the details that led to my release,” he said. “It is my understanding there were a great many people involved, that it resulted from the cooperation of many parties and that it is a very complicated situation.”

Jacobsen said he had not been beaten or mistreated during his 531 days of captivity.

He said he was grateful to President Reagan for his release and was convinced the Administration had worked diligently to ease the plight of hostages in Beirut.

“The President of the United States did care from the moment the first hostage was taken,” Jacobsen said.

He cautioned the news media to refrain from speculation about negotiations that led to his freedom and the release of Jenco and Weir.

“Mere speculation can be misinterpreted and frighten the people who hold the (other) hostages. Please, please be patient,” said Jacobsen, who was administrator of the American University Hospital in Beirut when he was taken hostage May 28, 1985.

“I refuse to speculate. After the hostages are released, I will speculate,” he said.

He said that his former captors will read and view all public statements he makes and that the remaining hostages could be affected.

“All the (news reports) are viewed and read in 24 hours. My captors watch everything that comes out in the media,” he said. “Please, remember that you are not reporting just to an American audience but to an audience in every country in the world, and particularly the captors.”

Flanked by his son, Eric, and the Rev. Harold G. Hultgren, an Episcopal priest he described as an “old, dear friend,” Jacobsen repeatedly refused to comment about Reagan’s alleged negotiations with Iran to help secure his release. At times, when reporters tried to get him to answer questions relating to the Iranian negotiations, he huddled with Eric before politely declining to answer.

Jacobsen, Jenco and Weir were held hostage by a group known as Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), which still is holding Anderson and Sutherland. Three other Americans--Frank Herbert Reed, 53, of Malden, Mass.; Joseph James Cicippio, 55, of Norristown, Pa., and Edward Austin Tracy, 56, of Rutland, Vt.--are being held by another group.

Jacobsen said he would travel to London “as soon as possible.” Eric Jacobsen later said his father would fly to London on Sunday after services at Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

In London, a spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A.K. Runcie, said Runcie will meet with the former hostages, Waite and representatives of Presbyterian, Espiscopalian and Roman Catholic churches on Monday to “discuss further steps in the humanitarian efforts to seek the release of hostages held in Lebanon.”

Jacobsen said he does not plan to return to Lebanon but added that he would go there if it meant the safe release of more hostages.

“My goal is to do everything I can to get those guys out,” he said. “If Terry Waite felt that my going back to Beirut would help free the hostages, I would go immediately without fear.”

During his captivity, Jacobsen said, he was angered by a TV broadcast of a videotaped message in which he offered his sympathy to the widow of William Buckley, an American hostage believed to have been killed. He said he delivered the message in the mistaken belief that Buckley had a wife and four children. He said he saw a tape of the broadcast last August while still being held hostage.

In it, he said, a reporter speculated that the hostages might have intended to use the videotape as a way to send a coded message to the United States. There was no coded message, he said, calling the TV report “gross, irresponsible speculation.”

Jacobsen said he had merely used the opportunity to make the videotape “to show my family that I was still alive.”

He said his captors were angered and embarrassed by the broadcast.

Wearing two silver bracelets on his right wrist inscribed with the names of Anderson and Sutherland and the date they were taken hostage, Jacobsen said he felt no rancor toward those who had held him hostage.

He also stressed that he left his 17-month imprisonment with a better understanding of the situation in the Middle East and the motivations of his captors, although he did not elaborate on the group’s goals.

“My heart cries out for all the people of Lebanon,” he said. “I have no anger or hatred for anyone in Lebanon. I understand their frustrations, and I understand their dreams.

“My captors were not cruel to me. I was not beaten. They were good to us. They brought us birthday cake. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to us.”

Jacobsen said the hostages lived “like the poor people of Lebanon.” They slept on foam rubber pads and were provided blankets and pillows and a plastic bowl and spoon.

He said he and his fellow hostages exercised every day in their small room. They spent hours discussing philosophy, politics, religion and other topics with each other and their guards, he said.

“We argued a lot, as you can imagine with four men together in a small place. We were all intelligent men with different religious and economic backgrounds,” he said.

In addition to the exercise and conversation, he said, the hostages passed time reading books provided by their captors. Jacobsen said he thought much about a favorite passion--music.

“I would hum as softly as I could the songs of all the Broadway musicals I could remember, all the way back to ‘Carousel’ and up through ‘Evita,’ ” he remembered.

Jacobsen said it was his faith in God and the “goodness of the American people” that helped him through the long ordeal. He said he sometimes punished himself with exercise when that faith waned.

He also talked of the Sunday morning that brought an end to his captivity. Early in the morning, he said, he was told to dress, that he was leaving.

“Before I was kidnaped, I didn’t get out much into Beirut, other than the campus. They told me to go to the American embassy,” Jacobsen said.

First, he said, he went to the location of the old U.S. Embassy, which had been bombed.

“I walked right by it,” he said.

One of his captors finally caught up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and rerouted him to the embassy’s new location.

Jacobsen said he had never feared for his life during his captivity.

“I was in the confines of my captors,” he said. “I was valuable property to them. They were not going to kill me. The people who suffered were my family and friends, and the family and friends of the other hostages.”

In an interview with a local newspaper, Jacobsen said his captors had urged him to remain in Lebanon and continue his work at American University Hospital.

“On one, no, several occasions, they said they hoped I would remain in Lebanon and help the poor people after my release and that I would be perfectly safe and they would protect me and that they needed me,” Jacobsen recalled.

At Thursday’s news conference, he talked fondly of the people who work in the hospital in the middle of war-torn Beirut. He even made an appeal for private contributions to sustain the hospital, which he described as “a bridge of understanding between the people of Lebanon and Americans.”

“They risk every minute of their lives to help the innocent victims of the war,” he said.

His immediate future, Jacobsen said, will center on efforts to win freedom for the remaining hostages. But he said he hopes eventually to return to work in hospital administration, in which he has been involved for three decades.

“I want to re-establish a relationship with the people I love and catch up on what I missed the last year and a half,” Jacobsen said. “I want to make up to my family. They suffered more than I.”