Sudanese Rebels Release 3 U.S. Hostages, 1 Briton

Three Americans and one Briton held hostage for six weeks by Sudanese rebels arrived in Nairobi this evening, looking exhausted after marching across rugged southern Sudan.

“We are doing fine,” Steve Anderson said after he and his fellow captives arrived at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport on a chartered plane.

The Americans--Anderson, 31, of Minneapolis; Katherine Taylor, 32, of Johnson City, Tenn., and Marc Nikkel, 37, of Reedley, Calif.--and Heather Sinclair, 29, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, were released earlier today at the Sudan-Kenya border, rebel and relief officials said.

Only Taylor looked particularly exhausted and ill, and a relief official at the airport said she had suffered from a mild stomach upset since Monday. Her three fellow captives also looked tired but healthy.

Asked whether they had a long march, the four only nodded. It is believed they had to march for most of the six weeks since they were kidnaped July 7 by anti-government rebels in southern Sudan.

Anderson, Taylor and Sinclair work for the Assn. of Christian Resource Organizations Serving Sudan, while Nikkel is an Episcopal Church of America lay missionary.

Armed rebels abducted the four from Bishop Gwynne College, 100 miles northwest of the Sudanese southern regional capital of Juba. Anderson, Taylor and Nikkel were lecturers at the school and Sinclair was a nurse working in a primary health-care program in the area.

A spokesman for the Sudanese People’s Liberation Organization said today that the movement decided to release the four after receiving appeals from former President Jimmy Carter and from the American embassies in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Speaking on the rebel movement’s clandestine radio, monitored in Nairobi, the People’s Liberation spokesman said the rebels were convinced that the four were innocent civilians.

He said the four were “hostages of the situation” and not of the People’s Liberation Organization and had been taken away from southern Sudan for their own safety. He said the four had to march over long distances before they could be safely released.