Iran Said to Double-Cross Kidnapers to Free Hostage

Iran apparently double-crossed some of its Lebanese allies to obtain the release Monday of West German hostage Rudolf Cordes after three months of secret negotiations between German and Iranian officials, European diplomatic sources said Tuesday.

U.S. officials greeted the news of Cordes’ release with cautiously optimistic predictions about the fate of the remaining 17 hostages, including nine Americans and three Britons, who have been held for as long as 3 1/2 years by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. Some officials suggested that Iran may be moving toward resolving the entire hostage ordeal before a new President is inaugurated next Jan. 20.

“Iran is trying to clear the deck,” an American official said. “With Cordes’ release, that’s one deck cleared. By (the time)the new Administration (takes office), I believe that Iran will be right with all the Western powers. But it is not going to happen overnight. First German hostages, then British, then they’ll tackle the U.S.”

Iran’s role in freeing Cordes, a 55-year-old businessman held captive for 20 months, provided European and American officials with the strongest of several recent indications that Iran is interested in strengthening relations with the West, even at the cost of some allies’ support, in the aftermath of the recent cease-fire in the costly eight-year war with Iraq.

The Iranians apparently acted out of knowledge that the abduction of Cordes, the last German hostage in Lebanon, had damaged their ties with a vital trading partner and the Western nation with which it had the closest relations.

“The Iranians perceived over time that Mr. Cordes really was an obstacle to better bilateral relations and for the help they expect from Germany,” a European envoy explained.

Until recently, said sources who insisted on remaining anonymous, Cordes was held by relatives and allies of Mohammed Ali Hamadi, the Lebanese Shia Muslim now on trial in West Germany for involvement in the hijacking of a TWA jetliner in 1985 in which an American was killed.

They said that the Iranian government apparently arranged for custody of Cordes to be transferred. The new captors, whose identity could not be determined, then freed him, reportedly infuriating the Hamadi clan, which the Iranian government had been financing.

The secret mediation leading to Cordes’ release began when an Iranian ambassador in Europe approached West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher during a summer holiday in Greece, sources said. Mohammed Javad Larijani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, then met in several publicized and unpublicized sessions with Genscher in July and August, the sources said.

‘In a Positive Way’

Genscher believed that he was making progress in mid-August when Larijani told him during a meeting in Frankfurt that Iran had “decided in a positive way” what to do about Cordes, who had been kidnaped off the streets of West Beirut in January, 1987. Cordes and a West German engineer, Alfred Schmidt, who was abducted three days later, were picked up shortly after Hamadi’s arrest in West Germany.

Hamadi’s brothers and friends are widely believed to have been responsible for abducting Cordes and Schmidt. One brother, Abbas Ali Hamadi, also was arrested in West Germany and sentenced to a 13-year prison term in April for the kidnapings. His other brother, Abdul Hadi Hamadi, is a senior security official of the radical Shia Muslim group called Hezbollah, or Party of God, in Beirut.

Schmidt, an engineer, was freed on Sept. 7, 1987. Nearly a year later, Genscher, in negotiations with the Iranians, was informed on Aug. 24 that Cordes would be freed on Sept. 12, a European envoy reported.

Problem for Iran

The problem for Iran, however, was how to keep its promise at a time when Mohammed Hamadi was going on trial and when winning concessions from his relatives would be more difficult than ever. Mohsen Rafighdost, Iran’s Cabinet minister in charge of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, already had acknowledged in June that Iran was experiencing problems “influencing” its allies.

Sources said that the Iranian government apparently was able eventually to arrange for custody of Cordes to be transferred.

“He went to other hands more open and accessible to Iran than the Hamadi clan was,” one source said. Cordes’ new custodians freed him just half an hour before midnight Monday.

The Hamadi clan, which operated under such titles as the “Strugglers for Freedom” and “the Organization of Oppressed of the Earth,” apparently had been led to believe that their interests would be taken into account in any deal.

Hamadi Family Complains

Infuriated members of the Hamadi family reportedly complained Tuesday to Iranian representatives and the Lebanese Party of God officials about Cordes’ release.

Cordes, stopping over in Damascus on his way home to West Germany, said, “I feel I’m born again.” He told reporters that he had seen none of the other Western hostages during his captivity in Lebanon.

Tuesday night, a special West German air force jet landed in the military section of Cologne-Bonn airport carrying Cordes, his wife, Marlene, and Chancellery Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, leader of the Bonn government’s hostage crisis team, Reuters news service reported.