The World - News from March 16, 1987

A pro-Iranian clergyman in Beirut appealed to a extremist group not to carry out its threat to kill French television crewman Jean-Louis Normandin. “Let us end this story. . . . We condemn this way of talking, that when a position is taken by a country or a president, it is faced with threats to execute a hostage,” said Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual mentor of Lebanon’s Muslim fundamentalist Hezbollah (Party of God). “If someone is innocent, he should not be kidnaped just because one country has a problem with another country,” Fadlallah told a Shia Muslim rally.