For France, 9 Hostages Remain a Mystery

Months after the release of the “last” three French hostages in Lebanon, a drive is on to free a French divorcee, her three small daughters and five Belgians seized by the Palestinian faction led by terrorist Abu Nidal.

They appear to be the forgotten captives, nine people who received scant attention when three Frenchmen were freed in Lebanon May 4.

Described by the Fatah Revolutionary Council as Israeli agents, most other accounts paint Jacqueline Valente and her companions as hapless Mediterranean vagabonds who sailed their converted fishing trawler, the Silco, into Levantine waters beyond their depth.

The Abu Nidal group, which said Nov. 8 its guerrillas boarded the Silco off the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, has no apparent reason to hold them. Yet there has been no sign of movement in the case. A French Foreign Ministry spokesman called it “an international tragicomedy.”

Valente, 29, is a thin-featured French brunette who fled marriage in Toulon to take up a drifter’s life, violating a custody order by absconding in 1985 with her daughters, Marie-Laure, 6, and Virginie, 5. They were with Valente on the Silco when it was seized.

Also abducted were Belgian cook Fernand Houtekins, 41, his brother Emmanuel, 43, Emmanuel’s wife Godelieve, 49, and their children, Laurent, 18, and Valerie, 17. Valente gave birth in captivity to a third daughter, by her companion Fernand.

From the outset, the motley crew of the Silco, a 43-foot sardine boat, was seen in a different light from the Western hostages held by the Islamic Jihad, pro-Iranian kidnapers operating in Beirut.

France rejoiced at the freeing of its “last three” hostages in May. But Valente’s family protested when French television broadcast a panel discussion by former hostages and families of hostages still held without contacting anyone regarding the Silco.

“We have a profound feeling of isolation,” said Valente’s brother-in-law, Andre Metral. “Are there two categories of hostages--those backed by the media and those who can only count on themselves?”

Valente’s family and supporters demonstrated in the Place de la Bastille in Paris on the July 14 national holiday, meeting later with officials who told them there was no resolution in sight.

The leader of a pro-Palestinian lobby in France, Lucien Bitterlin, met three times in Beirut with the Abu Nidal group to seek release of the younger children. But Valente refused to give up her two elder daughters.

“There’s a problem there,” Bitterlin said in an interview. “We haven’t been able to win release of the mother and the children.” Freedom for the other prisoners seems even more remote.

The Abu Nidal group maintains that the Silco was a spy vessel. Israel has denied any tie.

Bitterlin believes that they might be held in the sprawling Ein el Hilwa Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

The Houtekins brothers seem improbable secret agents. The presence of children on board points even more strongly away from espionage. Yet questions remain unanswered.

Little is known about the group’s movements in the two years preceding their kidnaping. Where did they travel in the Silco and how did they make a living?

Most of all, what was the Silco doing cruising off the Gaza Strip in November--if indeed that is where and when the boat was seized, as the Palestinians claim?

“Most people think they were not seized off Gaza, but somewhere else,” said the foreign ministry spokesman. “If you know anything about the vigilance of the Israeli navy, that seems very unlikely.”

The Foreign Ministry official said French policy forbids direct negotiations with terrorists, but the case is being pursued through “channels.” Bitterlin said Algeria is an intermediary.

During their eight months of captivity, Bitterlin said, the Palestinians have been conducting an “investigation” of the passengers’ alleged connection with Israeli intelligence. None has turned up in the European press--but Bitterlin said this has not cleared them.

“Down there people are kidnaped, cars blow up every day--that is daily life,” he said.