Jihad Spiritual Guide Asks No Revenge on Hostages

The spiritual guide for Iranian-backed guerrillas holding foreign captives in Lebanon was quoted as saying today that the hostages should not suffer because the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian jetliner.

But an anonymous caller purporting to speak for Islamic Jihad, which holds Americans Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland, threatened to kill one of them in revenge for Sunday’s attack.

The caller did not elaborate and it was not possible to authenticate the call. Islamic Jihad has said it would authenticate its written statements with photographs of hostages.

Deadline Passes

The caller said the hostage would be killed by 8 p.m. (10 a.m. PDT) and left in a West Beirut neighborhood. The deadline passed and no corpse was found, police said.

“I find no justification for making the hostages account for a matter with which they have no link,” Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in an interview with the Sohofiya News Agency, a Lebanese newsletter based in Muslim West Beirut.

“There’s no link between this subject (the hostages) and the shooting down of the plane.”

Fadlallah is spiritual leader of Hezbollah, or Party of God, which is believed to be the umbrella for pro-Iranian Shia Muslim factions holding most of the 18 foreigners, including nine Americans, missing in Lebanon.

“Islamic Jihad threatens to execute one of the two American hostages it holds by 8 p.m.,” the Voice of the Nation radio quoted the anonymous caller as saying today. He spoke Arabic.

The Sunni Muslim radio, based in West Beirut, quoted the caller as saying the hostage’s body would be dumped on the city’s Ramlet al Baida beach.

Islamic Jihad has authenticated many statements with photographs or videotapes of hostages. But on May 4, the Christian-run Voice of Lebanon radio quoted a caller claiming to speak for Islamic Jihad who announced that three French hostages would be set free. The three men, who had been held by Islamic Jihad, were released hours later.

By all accounts, the kidnapers and their hostages are penned up in a Shia barracks in Beirut’s southern slums by Syrian troops who moved in last month to halt militia fighting.

Syrians Control Area

The Syrians also control West Beirut and some observers believe the militants have difficulty moving around and may not be able to deliver statements as they did previously.

Anderson, 40, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, has been held longest of the 18 captives. He was kidnaped in Beirut on March 16, 1985. Sutherland, 57, acting dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut, was abducted June 9, 1985.

In Cadiz, Ky., Anderson’s sister, Peggy Say, said she was concerned about the threat but said she was “trying to take some comfort in the fact that Islamic Jihad has told us repeatedly that if a photograph does not accompany the communication, then it’s not official.”