2 Hostages Beg Kuwait to Save Lives : Say Hijackers Will Kill Them if Terrorists Are Not Released

Two Kuwaiti hostages aboard a hijacked jumbo jet begged their government Friday to save their lives by giving in to the demands of the Arab terrorists, but there was no sign that the Kuwaiti government was going to do so.

Nor was there any sign, after several rounds of negotiating, that Algerian officials had come any closer to persuading the hijackers to free the 31 remaining hostages. A mood of impasse dominated the Algiers airport, and no one was predicting that the hijacking, now in its 12th day, would come to an early end.

The hijackers, believed to be Lebanese Shia Muslims armed with handguns and grenades, seized the Kuwait Airways Boeing 747 jet on a flight from Bangkok to Kuwait on April 5. They are demanding the release of 17 Shia Muslims imprisoned in Kuwait for various terrorist acts, including the bombing of the U.S. and French embassies there in 1983. Most of the plane’s passengers were freed at stops in Iran and Cyprus. But the hijackers, believed to be as many as eight in number, executed two hostages along the way.

That record of bloodshed added a poignant fear to the latest pleas of the passengers for their government to give in to their captors.

In the first statement Friday, read in Arabic and broadcast to the control tower from the cockpit of the jet, a hostage said: “In the name of Allah the Merciful, I am Suleiman Mohammed Suleiman al Misheri. First, my best greeting to my family and all who ask about me. Second, I beg the Kuwaiti authorities to release the 17 persons who are imprisoned in the Kuwaiti jails. The kidnapers are determined and, if you do not release the prisoners, they will kill us.”

A second hostage, Mohammed Ahmed al Hajemi, told the control tower: “I am one of the hostages of the Boeing. I give greetings to my family, the children and adults, and I ask the Kuwaiti authorities to free the prisoners. Otherwise, they will kill us.”

The hijackers released a diabetic passenger Thursday night, the only hostage freed since the plane arrived in Algiers, and then read a declaration, in a mixture of Arabic and English, to the control tower.

“We are not terrorists,” the hijackers said, accusing the media of describing them as terrorists while ignoring what Israel has done.

“When Israelis bomb civilian targets, they are not considered terrorists,” the hijackers said. “We are men of principle. We are not highway bandits. We would prefer not to use such methods. But we have no choice.”

Kuwaiti sources told journalists that the hostage released by the hijackers Thursday night, Jamal Zaki, had provided Kuwaiti officials with a harrowing description of conditions on the aircraft. The reports could not be confirmed, however, and Zaki was not available for comment.

Zaki, according to the Kuwaitis, said that his hands had been tied behind his back and that he had been beaten repeatedly. He said the hijackers had allowed no passenger to talk to another and had refused to let them read. When a passenger needed to use a toilet, Zaki said, he or she was escorted there at gunpoint.

Until the plane was cleaned Thursday, the hostage said, the plane was filled with “an appalling stench which, in itself, made the hostages sick.”

Zaki also said, according to the Kuwaiti sources, that the hijackers had rigged four bombs to the doors of the aircraft.