Hijackers Free Hostages, End 16-Day Ordeal

Muslim hijackers freed their hostages on a Kuwaiti jet today after saying that Algeria had offered a solution to the 16-day ordeal in which two people were killed and dozens terrorized.

Algeria’s Interior Minister, Hadi Khediri, said shortly before the 31 hostages began leaving the plane: “A solution settling all the issues of the hijacking has just been reached.”

Khediri said the blue and white Boeing 747 will be returned to Kuwait.

Asked by reporters clamoring on the steps of the Algiers airport VIP lounge what would become of the hijackers, he replied: “That is a question which regards Algeria.”

Two women wearing black veils, distant cousins of the emir of Kuwait, were the first off the plane. They entered a waiting white bus.

Driven to VIP Lounge

They were driven to the airport VIP lounge, waving to a crowd of journalists at the edge of the tarmac, then were driven out of the airport at high speed.

About 20 male hostages followed the two women out of the aircraft. Many of them moved slowly, shuffling painfully forward as they reached the tarmac. Pale, drawn and unshaven, they looked exhausted but managed a few smiles and waves to jostling reporters who broke through a police cordon near the plane.

The men were taken by bus to the airport’s VIP lounge where they were welcomed by Kuwaiti and Algerian officials.

There was no immediate sign of the hijackers.

The shades on the airplane’s windows were raised for the first time since its arrival last Wednesday in Algiers, the third stop on its odyssey.

In a statement issued in Arabic at 4 a.m. today local time, the gunmen thanked Algeria for its help “in the case of the brothers in Kuwait and their help in other humanitarian and Muslim causes.”

The gunmen had been demanding the release of 17 convicted terrorists from Kuwaiti prisons.

The statement continued: “We declare to the Muslim people and people who seek freedom that today, on the third day of Ramadan, we will end the Kuwaiti airplane operation, giving our best regards to the Kuwaiti people.”

Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, started in Algeria on Monday.

Negotiations Throughout Day

An Algerian government team has been mediating between the hijackers, believed to number between five and eight, and a delegation of Kuwaiti government representatives.

Algerian mediators made at least five visits to the captive jetliner on Tuesday and arranged what appeared to be indirect talks between the gunmen and a former Algerian prime minister.

Floodlights that nightly bathed the jetliner since it landed in Algiers early April 13 were turned off late Tuesday, allegedly for a technical reason. They remained off hours later, making it hard for reporters to detect movement around the aircraft.

The Kuwaiti news agency KUNA had carried two separate reports Tuesday night claiming a possible breakthrough.

KUNA quoted Osa Mazidi, the Kuwaiti minister of state for services, as saying that “a breakthrough is expected at any moment.”

Mazidi headed the Kuwaiti negotiating delegation in Larnaca, Cyprus, where the plane sat for five days before flying to Algiers. The plane, hijacked April 5 on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand, to Kuwait, first spent three days in Mashhad, Iran.

Early Tuesday, one of the two women hostages who is related to the emir of Kuwait sent out a plea to her royal kin to comply with the hijackers’ demand to free the 17 men imprisoned in Kuwait for the December, 1983, bombings of the U.S. and French embassies.

“We want you to tell our families that my sister and I and all the passengers are well, although our morale is low and Fadel is naturally deteriorating,” Anware al Sabah, 20, said over the plane’s radio.

‘Free the Prisoners’

“I hope from my family and government that they will hurry to free the prisoners,” she said. “If not, we are all in danger. Thank you.”

The gunmen had killed two Kuwaiti hostages, whose bodies were thrown from the plane at the Larnaca airport.

On Saturday, they made their only direct threat to authorities, saying they wanted fuel to take the plane out of Algeria for a “massacre.” They later said they would give Algeria more time to negotiate a solution.

Anware Sabah’s tense but firm voice contrasted with a plea on Monday from her brother, Fadel al Sabah, 33, whose words were barely audible. He is believed to be suffering from a nervous disorder.

There had been no word from Anware’s 22-year-old sister, Ibtesam.

A former Algerian prime minister, Mohammed Abdel Ghani, now minister of state without portfolio, on Tuesday stationed himself at the foot of the gangway and consulted with an Algerian mediator, who then entered the plane.

Mediators made at least four other trips inside the plane.

Conversation centered on fixing the floodlights and ordering the late-night meal after a day of fasting for Ramadan, apparently being observed on the plane.

Meanwhile, France’s Le Monde newspaper, quoting “Arab sources,” reported Tuesday that the emir of Kuwait, Sheik Jabar al Ahmed al Sabah, had been in telephone contact with President Hafez Assad of Syria, allegedly trying to encourage Assad to accept the plane in Beirut. There “the passengers could be freed and the commandos could evaporate,” the article said. The information could not be confirmed.