Americans Treated Brutally by Captors, Former Hostage Says : They Tried Escape, Sister of Freed Frenchman Says

Former hostage Jean-Paul Kauffmann told his family that American hostages in Lebanon were treated brutally because they tried to escape, the French news agency Agence France-Presse reported today.

Kauffmann and diplomats Marcel Carton and Marcel Fontaine arrived in Paris on Thursday after being freed Wednesday from three years of captivity. They were the last French hostages to be released from Lebanon.

The French news agency quoted Kauffmann’s sister, Marie-Genevieve Dagin, as saying he shared a cell recently with Frank Herbert Reed, who was “mistreated to the point of being left prostrate.” Reed was kidnaped Sept. 9, 1986, and is one of nine American hostages in Lebanon.

Kauffmann, 44; Carton, 62, and Fontaine, 45, were in the Val de Grace military hospital for two days of examinations.

News Conference Next Week

In a statement issued after the AFP dispatch quoting his sister, Kauffmann said he intends to speak fully at a news conference next week and does not want anyone speaking for him or relaying his impressions until then.

Dagin was quoted by AFP as saying her brother told her that the American hostages held by the pro-Iranian Shia Muslim group Islamic Jihad were “the object of brutality because they tried to escape.”

The dispatch did not make clear whether Kauffmann specified which Americans were mistreated for trying to get away.

Dagin also said she learned from her brother that Fontaine was briefly detained with Terry Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Waite disappeared Jan. 20, 1987, while on a mission in Lebanon seeking the release of the hostages.

Fontaine had said Thursday that he had shared a cell with American Terry A. Anderson, the longest-held foreign hostage. Anderson, 40, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, was kidnaped March 16, 1985, in Beirut.

‘Not a Glimmer of Light’

Kauffmann was kept in total darkness for a year and a half, his sister said.

“He did not see the sun or a glimmer of light for a single instant. An arm and a leg were chained permanently to a radiator, even when he slept,” she was quoted as saying.

He told her he was moved to 18 different locations, sometimes in a coffin, the agency reported.

“He told us that each time he feared he would not get out, because there was no air,” she said.

Premier Jacques Chirac hinted that France might restore diplomatic ties with Tehran, which he said helped secure the hostages’ freedom, but he denied reports that the government had paid a ransom. (Story, Page 7.) Chirac also thanked President Hafez Assad of Syria and Lebanese military authorities for their help in freeing the hostages.