S. Africa Frees Swiss Couple, Returns Them to Swaziland

Authorities freed a Swiss couple Sunday and returned them to Swaziland, where security personnel had seized them last week because of alleged links to African National Congress guerrillas.

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha said his government released the man and his fiancee because of its good relations with Swaziland and Switzerland.

In Bern, the Swiss Foreign Ministry said in a statement its ambassador to South Africa had told Botha in “firm words that the arrest of the two Swiss would strain relations between the two countries.”

Swaziland, a small kingdom almost surrounded by South Africa, also protested the abductions, which occurred early Friday during raids in Swaziland in which two people were killed and at least four were abducted.

The Swiss couple, Daniel Schneider, 29, a graphic artist, and Corrine Bischoff, 25, an assistant hotel manager, told reporters that they had been questioned intensively but had not been mistreated.

They said South African soldiers pulled them from their beds before dawn Friday, blindfolded and handcuffed them and took them in a convoy of at least three vehicles into South Africa.

Schneider said he was taken to a police post in Pretoria while Bischoff was kept in Middleburg, 85 miles to the east. He said he told his interrogators he had no connection with the African National Congress, and police later told him he was being released because they believed him.

The couple said they were reunited Sunday and flown in a security force helicopter to the border.