Hijackers Believed Bound for Either Iran or Lebanon

Shia Muslim gunmen wiped their fingerprints from a hijacked Kuwaiti jumbo jet early today and ended their 16-day siege peacefully, apparently getting safe conduct to either Iran or Lebanon.

The 31 haggard hostage passengers emerged from their long ordeal and told of hooded hijackers with expressionless eyes “like a shark” who terrorized them with mock executions.

Pale, frightened and eyes glazed, the last hostages stumbled to freedom after their captors slipped out of the plane’s back door and vanished into the Algiers dawn.

At 362 1/2 hours in captivity, the 31 were the longest-held hostages in the history of hijacking.

Nine Gunmen

One of the freed hostages told reporters there were nine gunmen--previous estimates had put their number at eight. Others said their wrists were bound most of the time.

Their ordeal on flight KU422 began over the Arabian Sea on a trip from Bangkok to Kuwait on April 5. It finally ended in Algiers at 6 a.m. local time.

Two sisters from Kuwait’s ruling family--the last women on the plane--were the first to leave. They were followed by the 22 other passengers and seven crew members.

But the nine gunmen had already left through a rear door. They were whisked away by Algerian security men, and official Algerian sources said they have been offered a choice of going to Iran or Lebanon.

Still in Algeria

The sources said the nine are still in Algeria and will be given some days to decide where they want to go.

The hostages--and even their pilot, 53-year-old Iraqi Subhi Naim Youssef--said they had no idea they would be freed until the last moment.

Asked when he had realized it was all over, Youssef said: “I opened my eyes and heard different voices, different faces. I’m relieved, happy. . . . Most of the time we were hoping, thinking when we could get free.”

The aircraft’s Egyptian purser, Abdul-Moneim Abdul-Razzak Mahmoud, told reporters his worst moment was when one of the hooded hijackers threatened him during the takeover.

Eyes Like a Shark

“He came at me with a gun, with a cold-blooded look,” Mahmoud said.

“Have you ever seen a shark in the water? The same eyes exactly, no expression, pale face and very steady hands in my face asking me to give up.

“Then they put me on my face and two of them stood on my back,” he added. “From the very beginning I thought of death because they were thinking I was security, carrying a gun.”

The hostages freed in Algiers said they did not know that two Kuwaiti passengers, a fireman and a border guard, had been killed and their bodies dumped on the tarmac at a stop in Larnaca, Cyprus.

End Came as Surprise

“We did not know all these things until just now,” said Mahmoud.

A Saudi passenger said the speed at which the hijacking ended took him by surprise. The gunmen had been “moving around talking with each other. But I didn’t know what they were doing.

“We were all asleep. We were woken up by three or four men from Algeria who said ‘Relax, don’t worry, you are in Algeria. You are going outside.’ ”

The Saudi said the days aboard the plane passed “like we were dead, finished.

He added: “If (the gunmen) said ‘I want to kill you,’ I said ‘OK, kill me any time.’ ”