Kuwaitis Torture Shia Prisoners, Islamic Jihad Says

Pro-Iranian kidnapers charged Friday that 17 fellow Shia Muslims convicted of bombings in Kuwait are being tortured in Kuwaiti jails and threatened to treat Western hostages similarly.

Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), which holds two Americans and three Frenchmen hostage, said one French captive was “gravely ill” but did not identify him.

A typewritten statement in Arabic accused Kuwait of “severe psychological and physical torture” of the 17 Shias, who were convicted of bombing the U.S. and French embassies in the Persian Gulf emirate Dec. 3, 1983. Seven people were killed in those attacks. The release of the 17 Shias has been a longstanding demand of Islamic Jihad.

The statement was delivered to a Western news agency in Muslim West Beirut. It demanded an improvement of conditions for the Kuwait prisoners and declared:

“Otherwise we shall begin mistreating the hostages with us likewise. No news about them will be released in future. We note that one of the French hostages is gravely ill.”

The statement was accompanied by a videotape in which French hostages Jean-Paul Kauffman and Marcel Carton pleaded for help.

“France knows well that our fate is tightly connected with the prisoners in Kuwait,” Kauffman, 42, said. “France and Kuwait are friendly states. Why has nothing been undertaken with the Kuwaiti authorities?”

“It must be known that the prisoners (in Kuwait) are under severe conditions of detention,” Kauffman said. “Our captors threaten to inflict upon us the same ill-treatment if nothing is done to put an end to that torture.”

Carton, 63, appeared on the videotape wearing glasses, clean-shaven and clad in dark blue pajamas. He is the oldest of the 24 foreigners missing in Lebanon.

“I am like a rat at the bottom of a trap,” he said. “ . . . A rat that has lost all its vital instincts.” His voice shook as he read from a statement.

Islamic Jihad said it would give Kuwait 15 days to issue filmed interviews with the prisoners in Kuwait before it starts “mistreating the hostages.”

Kauffman is a television journalist and Carton was protocol officer at the French Embassy in Beirut. Kauffman was kidnaped May 22, 1985, and Carton and the third French captive, 46-year-old Vice Consul Marcel Fontaine, were seized March 22, 1985.